Discover Chester

A Roman fortress, rebuilt in every century since

Chester began as Deva Victrix, a fortress the Roman Twentieth Legion built on a sandstone bluff above the River Dee around 79 AD, one of the largest legionary bases in Britain. The walls that still ring the city today follow the Roman circuit closely enough that you are walking the same line the legion walked, extended and rebuilt by the Anglo-Saxons and Normans and kept in repair ever since: at just under two miles, it is the most complete town wall circuit in the country. Inside the walls, the medieval city grew up around a covered, two-tier system of shopping galleries called the Rows, first recorded by name in 1293 and unique to Chester at this scale, still lined with shops both at street level and on the gallery above.

Much of what looks oldest in Chester is younger than it looks. The famous black-and-white timber frontages on Eastgate, Watergate and Bridge Street are largely the product of a Victorian rebuilding campaign, led by the architect John Douglas among others, that reclad and reinvented the city centre in a self-consciously medieval style from the 1850s onward. It is a genuinely well-done piece of Victorian theatre rather than a deception, and the city is upfront about it. Around 92,760 people live in the wider urban area today, and the city still does the things it has always done: races at the Roodee, one of the oldest racecourses in the world and still working; markets and shops under the Rows; and, since 2007, several hundred thousand visitors a year to Chester Zoo just north of the centre, one of the largest and best-regarded zoos in Britain.