Best Things Across The UK

Harlech Castle: The Invincible Fortress That Fell to Owain Glyndŵr, Above the Bay In 1404, after four years of the most sustained Welsh uprising against English rule since the Conquest, Owain Glyndŵr took Harlech Castle — the fortress that Edward I had built in seven...

Raglan Castle: Where Henry Tudor Was Raised, Among Wales's Grandest Ruins Before Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England — before he won the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and founded the Tudor dynasty that would rule Britain for 118 years — he was a boy living...

Castell Coch: William Burges's Fairytale Towers, Rising from the Welsh Forest Above Cardiff The 3rd Marquess of Bute was the wealthiest man in Britain in the 1860s — the fortune built on Cardiff's coal docks, which had made the city the world's greatest...

Caerphilly Castle: Wales's Largest, with a Leaning Tower That Beats Pisa Caerphilly's leaning tower tilts more dramatically than the one in Pisa. It is not as tall and it is not as famous, but as a structural consequence of a failed Civil War demolition...

Blackness Castle: The Ship That Never Sailed, Above the Firth of Forth From the south shore of the Firth of Forth, Blackness Castle looks as though it has run aground. The pointed prow at the north end, the square stern at the south, the tall central tower rising like...

Dalhousie Castle: The Medieval Hotel Where Cromwell Slept, Eight Miles from Edinburgh King Edward I used it as a staging post during his campaigns against Scotland. Oliver Cromwell occupied it briefly during the English Civil War. Sir Walter Scott was a guest. Queen...