Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian architecture Gothic revival mansion, transformed from a Norman keep erected over a Roman fort in the Castle Quarter of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. The Castle is a Grade I Listed Building.

In the early 19th century the castle was enlarged and refashioned in an early Gothic Revival style for John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute by Henry Holland. But its transformation began in 1868 when John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute commissioned William Burges to undertake a massive rebuilding which turned the castle into a medieval palace. Bute's and Burges's shared interest in medieval gothic revivalism, combined with Bute's almost limitless financial resources as the richest man in Britain, meant that Burges could build on the grandest scale. His imagination, his scholarship, his architectural and decorative talents, his inventiveness and his sheer high spirits combined to make Cardiff Castle the "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."