[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Cardiff Castle
was built by the Normans
in 1081, 15 years
after their King
William the Conqueror invaded
Britain from northern France.
Constructed on the remains of
a third century Roman fort,
this legacy of two
major conquests
was the seed from which
the modern city grew.
Though expanded and
redeveloped many times,
it remains an iconic feature
of the Welsh capital.
In the 1860s, this was the
family home of the fabulously
wealthy John Crichton-Stuart.
He hated growing up at the
castle and later commissioned
architect William
Burges to transform it
in lavish Gothic revival style.
Burgess added new
towers, a roof garden,
a sumptuous banqueting hall, and
this magnificent 150 foot clock
tower.
[SIRENS]
During World War II,
air raid shelters
tunneled into the medieval
walls protected 1,800 people.
In 1947, after the
death of Crichton's son,
the family bequeathed the
castle to the city of Cardiff.
A few miles north
of Cardiff, a castle
that would grace
any children's story
towers above the
village of Tongwynlais.
This is Red Castle, or, as it's
known in Welsh, Castell Coch.
It was built for the
owner of Cardiff Castle,
William Creighton Stewart,
as a rural retreat,
but he rarely used it.
Although he died before
its completion in 1891,
the eccentric
architect James Burges
recreated an authentic
medieval fortress
with three dramatic stone towers
and a formidable gatehouse,
complete with drawbridge.
English architectural
historian Joseph Mordaunt Crook
described it as "the learned
dream world of a great patron
and his favorite architect,
a fairy tale castle
which seems almost to have
materialized from the margins
of a medieval manuscript."
