Cardiff Castle
About
Nearly 2,000 years of Wales in one city-centre block: Roman fort foundations, a Norman motte and shell keep you can climb, wartime air-raid shelters inside the medieval walls, and the reason most people come, the Victorian Gothic apartments William Burges built for the third Marquess of Bute, all gilded ceilings, painted fables and rooms that look like a fever dream of the Middle Ages. The Animal Wall outside, with its stone lions, lynx and anteater, is free to anyone walking past on Castle Street. Open daily year-round except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day; note that during the summer concert season (Depot Live, early June to mid August) the castle closes early on show days, so check the website before an afternoon visit. Most visitors spend one to three hours.
Photos
Highlights
- ✓William Burges' Victorian Gothic apartments
- ✓The Norman shell keep and its city views
- ✓Roman fort remains and wartime shelters in the walls
- ✓The Animal Wall on Castle Street, free from the pavement
Tips
- →Check the castle website in summer: on Depot Live concert days (the season runs roughly early June to mid August; the 2026 run was 6 June to 15 August) the castle closes early or fully.
- →Cardiff residents can get a free three-year 'Key to the Castle'; visitors pay standard admission, see the castle's tickets page for current prices.
- →The daily guided tours of the Burges apartments are worth planning around; the painted rooms need the commentary.
Best Season
More Attraction Activities
National Museum Cardiff
Free national museum: Monet and the Davies sisters' Impressionists upstairs, dinosaurs and a whale skeleton downstairs.
St Fagans National Museum of History
Wales' free open-air history museum: a whole village of re-erected Welsh buildings in the grounds of an Elizabethan manor.
Cardiff Bay & the Wales Millennium Centre
The regenerated docklands: Wales Millennium Centre, the Senedd, the Pierhead and Roald Dahl Plass around a freshwater bay.