A Norman keep, a Victorian gothic playground, and a Roman amphitheater. Are you not entertained!?

The 12th century keep 

We took some time this morning to get yesterday’s blogging up to date and then headed out. Today’s first stop was Cardiff Castle which is a hodge podge of a construction begun in Roman times. Parts of the current walls are built on the remnants of the walls built by the Romans. The current walls themselves date from various times as subsequent holders of the property added to it.

The view down from the top of the keep

There is a video presentation that begins your visit. I am not sure that words can do it justice, but I will try. There are 3 screen, the center showing a digital animation of the changes to the castle over the centuries. It opens with images of a child on a green lawn drawing castles in a notebook and making paper boats out of used pages. One of these toy boats gets tossed into a stream. The notebook is then picked up by a teenaged girl who begins hallucinating scenes from the city’s history beginning with the Romans. Somewhere along the way she meets a young man and the pair are chased through time by people trying to steal the child’s doodle book. My favorite part was when they were walking down a street and are approached by a group of soccer fans singing and cheering. The hooligans suddenly transform into medieval soldiers charging at them. As the film ends the screen is slowly raised and the music swells dramatically and you are looking out a long window onto the castle itself, magically raised from the child’s drawings. See it. You will not be disappointed.

The ceiling in the Arab Room

We walked along the battlements a short ways and then descended to the grounds. There is a trebuchet, which is my favorite medieval siege weapon, which really works and is fired on “special occasions”. Unfortunately, today was not one of those occasions. I would have loved to watch soldiers in period costumes launch artificial stones across the yard. It would be like the reenactments at the cannonball national parks at home.

Aside from the trebuchet, the best thing in the castle is the 12^th century Norman keep. At this point it is just a ruin, but it is structurally sound enough to allow visitors to climb to the top. The way up is a narrow, dark (turn-on-your-flashlight-app dark), spiral staircase built by people with much smaller, more dexterous feet than we have. We conquered the tower and were rewarded with views across the city. There were also ducks apparently lording it over the duck down in the moat. It absurdly photogenic up there with the Welsh flag whipping in the wind.

The roof garden

When we were finished storming the keep, it was time for our house tour. The “house” belonged to the Marquess of Bute, John Stuart. The Second Marquess became superhumanly wealthy during the Industrial Revolution by selling mining rights to coal companies and then by building the dock from which those companies exported the coal, thus billing them twice. Genius! The Third Marquess used the money to undertake a renovation for which the architect, according to our guide, had no monetary or time limit. So for the next 20 years, the place became an idealized Victorian imagining of the gothic period. I could go on and on about it, but I will not. The whole thing is a highlight, but there are a few particularly memorable parts. The winter smoking room is painted in gold and is decorated according to the theme of time: seasons, zodiac, day and night, etc. with stained glass windows of the Norse gods whose names give us some of the days of the week. The Arab room is Italian marble in many colors from the floor to about 5 feet up the walls and then gold arches up to the top of the 18 foot ceiling. (I imagine it is what the inside of Aladdin’s lamp would look like.) The nursery is tiled with scenes from fairy tales. The roof top garden shows scenes from the life of the prophet Elijah with Hebrew inscriptions around a mosaicked floor and fountain. The Marquess’ bedroom is dedicated to St.John, the author of The Book of Revelation. John’s name is painted on the roof beams forwards and backwards so that it can be read in the mirrored ceiling. Each of the seven stained glass windows in the room is dedicated to a different one of the seven churches of Asia Minor mentioned in Revelation. You get the idea. All this and the family only used the place for about 6 weeks a year.

If you have been following along with us, then you realize this is the point in our day when we visit a café. Today we had a plate of scones with clotted cream and tea/coffee. Z had a hot chocolate and something called a “bubble cake”. That turned out to be a Rice Krispy treat made with chocolate instead of marshmallows. Then it was time to catch a bus to Caerleon.

Just enough room for me and 7 of my closest friends

The bus ride was not interesting, though it was time consuming. We will not talk about it. Caerleon, the town that exists on the site of the old Roman fort is ridiculously quaint. We started at the Museum of the Roman Legion. It is not a large collection, but there are many wonderful displays detailing life in a frontier Roman fortress. My personal favorite was the Roman piggy bank and its pile of silver coins. The Legion forced soldiers to save part of their pay which was stored in jars which were not decorated like pigs in the headquarters for each man. A soldier could make additional deposits if they wished. So it was the Roman equivalent of a 401K. (A CDI k?) There were several tombstones and funeral objects and some artwork excavated from sites around town.

Next, we went over to the excavated site of the barracks. It is not much to look at, just low stone walls, but there is enough exposed to give an idea of life there. Each group of 8 soldiers had two rooms to share, each about 10 feet square. One of these was for storing equipment, the other for living and sleeping. Cozy! At the end of each set of 12 such arrangements was an officers’ quarters. 

All it needs is Russell Crowe

These were decidedly roomier covering the same amount of ground as the living space of 32 regular soldiers. Against the walls surrounding the barracks (because of the chance of fires) were the kitchens and bread ovens. There was also a latrine which frankly did not seem large enough to accommodate the needs of the number of men encamped there. Nearby is the ground where the soldiers would have drilled each day. Today that ground was hosting a cricket practice.

The barracks are not far from the amphitheater, so we went over there next. It is amazing! The ring of the arena is clearly visible with the raised seating areas all around. It is possible to walk down through the Porta Pompa on to the floor just as the gladiators did. The whole thing is a lovely carpet of green grass where we were sad to not have a picnic. The pictures will have to suffice for description because I don’t feel that I am doing it justice.

We bussed back to Cardiff, but not in time to make it to evensong at Llandaff Cathedral. Instead, we went shopping and made the wonderful discovery that our Starbucks cards work here also.