+4 photos"Edward I spent £15,000 building Conwy Castle in just four years — the equivalent of roughly £40 million today. He employed 1,500 labourers and craftsmen. When Madog ap Llywelyn besieged it the winter after completion, Edward himself was trapped inside with dwindling supplies. He refused to surrender. The river froze. The Welsh withdrew."
About
Conwy Castle stands on a rocky outcrop above the estuary where the River Conwy meets the sea, eight massive towers rising like stone fists from the waterfront. Edward I's master mason, James of St George, designed it in 1283 as the linchpin of his "iron ring" of Welsh castles, and he created something that UNESCO now calls one of the finest examples of late 13th-century military architecture in Europe.
The castle is built to a figure-of-eight plan — an outer ward and an inner ward, each with four drum towers. The King's apartments in the inner ward still retain their original window seats and fireplaces, and the Great Hall was large enough to feast the entire garrison. Edward spent a small fortune on it — £15,000 in medieval money — and the town walls he built alongside it, three-quarters of a mile long with 21 towers, are the most complete circuit of medieval town walls in Britain. You can walk the entire length.
Climb any of the eight towers and the views are extraordinary: the Conwy estuary, the mountains of Snowdonia, Thomas Telford's suspension bridge, and Robert Stephenson's tubular railway bridge — eight centuries of engineering framed in a single glance. The castle is roofless now, open to the wind and rain, and all the more beautiful for it. Turner painted it. Wordsworth wrote about it. On an autumn evening, with the sun setting behind Snowdonia and the estuary turning gold, Conwy is perhaps the most photogenic castle in Wales.
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Getting There
Terrain & Accessibility
The castle involves significant stair climbing to access towers and battlements. Ground level areas are accessible but the real experience is on the walls. Not wheelchair accessible beyond the courtyard. Spectacular views from the top but not for those with vertigo.
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