Castles of Wales

Wales is often said to have more castles per square mile than any other country in Europe, with the total usually put at around 600 sites, from towering stone fortresses to grassy mounds on hilltops. That makes it one of the most rewarding places in Britain to visit for medieval history. Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris form Edward I’s UNESCO-listed “iron ring”, built across North Wales from the 1280s to hold the conquest in place. Edward’s master mason, James of St George, designed them as a coordinated system, with several sited on the coast so they could be supplied by sea. Beaumaris, begun in 1295, was never finished, and its unfinished state is part of its appeal. If you’re wondering who built the Welsh castles, these four are the answer for the north. Together they are the best-known of Edward I’s castles in Wales, and each is a full day out in its own right.

Caerphilly adds a different chapter. It was begun in 1268 by the Marcher lord Gilbert de Clare, years before Edward’s campaigns, to hold off Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the native Prince of Wales. It is the largest castle in Wales and the second largest in Britain after Windsor, and its concentric stone walls and wide artificial lakes were state-of-the-art military engineering for their day. It sits just north of Cardiff, which makes it the natural starting point for anyone exploring the south Welsh castles. Compare it with the north and you see two stories side by side: a native prince resisting a powerful Anglo-Norman lord, and later a king imposing a new order on an entire country.

Mountains & National Parks

Snowdonia (Eryri) and the Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog) anchor the country’s outdoor identity, and both national parks now use their Welsh names officially. Snowdon, known in Welsh as Yr Wyddfa, stands 1,085 metres (3,560 feet) high, the tallest mountain in England and Wales. Is Snowdon hard to climb? On the main paths, the Llanberis Path and the Pyg Track, it is a long but manageable walk, and most walkers allow a full day. The knife-edge scramble of Crib Goch is a different matter. The best time to climb Snowdon is a clear summer morning, when the paths are open and the summit views stretch to the Irish Sea.

Beneath the walking routes lies real historical depth. The Miners’ Track follows the path once used by copper miners heading up to the Britannia mine beside Glaslyn. The Watkin Path is named after the railway magnate Sir Edward Watkin, and Snowdon Mountain Railway, a rack-and-pinion line that opened in 1896, carries visitors from Llanberis to the summit. Nearby, Dolbadarn Castle, built in the early 13th century by Llywelyn the Great, guards the Llanberis Pass as a native Welsh stronghold, long before Edward I’s castles. At Dinas Emrys, near Beddgelert, legend places the red and white dragons that gave Wales its emblem, though that story belongs to folklore rather than the historical record.

The Brecon Beacons offer a gentler, more rolling kind of grandeur. Pen y Fan, at 886 metres, is the highest peak in southern Britain, and its neighbour Corn Du shares the same sweeping red-sandstone ridge. The Romans left their mark too, with a fort at Y Gaer near Brecon, while Carreg Cennen Castle sits on a limestone crag above the Black Mountain. Things to do in the Brecon Beacons range from waterfall walks to castle ruins and stargazing in one of Europe’s International Dark Sky Reserves. Quiet ridges and valleys in both parks carry centuries of history underfoot.

Historic Towns & Coastal Wales

Cardiff is the capital of Wales, a working port that reinvented itself as a cultural capital. It began as a Roman fort and later became a Norman castle town, but its modern shape was set in the 19th century, when the Bute family’s docks made it one of the busiest coal-exporting ports in the world. Cardiff Castle still shows these layers together, with Roman walls beside the Victorian Gothic fantasy that William Burges built for the Marquess of Bute. Cardiff was formally recognised as capital only in 1955, and the old docklands have since been remade. Cardiff Bay history is now written in the Pierhead Building, the Wales Millennium Centre and the Senedd. The bay’s multicultural docklands community, once known as Tiger Bay, is a key part of that story.

St Davids, Britain’s smallest city, is built entirely around its ancient cathedral. The city is named after Dewi Sant, the sixth-century patron saint of Wales, and the present cathedral was begun in 1181 in a sheltered hollow that hid it from the sea. It has drawn pilgrims for centuries, and tradition holds that two pilgrimages here equalled one to Rome, though that belongs to folklore rather than record. The cathedral belongs to the Church in Wales, an Anglican church, so it is not Catholic, a common point of confusion for visitors. Beside it stand the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, a reminder of how much power the medieval bishops held. Today it is a quiet town inside the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, with the cathedral’s concerts and music festival drawing a steady cultural calendar.

Tenby is a walled medieval harbour town on the Pembrokeshire coast, known in Welsh as Dinbych-y-pysgod, “little fortress of the fish”. Its town walls date from the 13th century and were strengthened in the Tudor period, and the Five Arches gate is the best-preserved stretch. Tenby history is also visible on Castle Hill, where Tenby Castle’s Norman ruins look out over the bay, and in the Tudor Merchant’s House, a rare survivor of the town’s trading past. By the 19th century Tenby had become a fashionable seaside resort, and the pastel-painted harbour front still reflects that era.