Caernarfon Castle
Caernarfon Castle on the northwest coast of Wales is one of the most formidable and architecturally magnificent of the castles built by Edward I of England during his conquest and subjugation of Wales in the late thirteenth century, a vast fortress of polygonal towers and distinctive banded masonry that served simultaneously as a military stronghold, a seat of royal administration and a symbolic statement of English power over the conquered Welsh nation. Together with its companion fortresses at Conwy, Beaumaris and Harlech, Caernarfon forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognised as the finest surviving ensemble of medieval military architecture in Europe.
The castle was begun in 1283 and continued under construction for several decades, its design departing significantly from the conventional round tower plan of English castle-building in favour of the distinctive polygonal towers and the banded masonry of dark and light stone that Edward directed in conscious imitation of the Theodosian walls of Constantinople, which he had seen during his crusade to the Holy Land. The symbolic reference to imperial architecture was entirely deliberate: Edward was building an English Jerusalem in Wales, a seat of power that would proclaim the permanence of his conquest in the most visible and architecturally prestigious terms available.
The birth of Edward's son in the castle in 1284, subsequently presented to the Welsh as a prince who had been born in Wales and could speak no English, established the tradition of investing the eldest son of the English monarch as Prince of Wales, a ceremony that has been performed at Caernarfon on several occasions and most recently in 1969 when the investiture of Prince Charles was a major televised event. The castle's connection to this tradition of investiture has become an important part of its significance as a symbol of the constitutional relationship between England and Wales.