# Caernarfon Castle

castle in Caernarfon, North Wales

Caernarfon, United Kingdom

Settlement · Fortification. 1283 CE

## Story

• A motte-and-bailey stood on this peninsula by the end of the eleventh century, and Edward I began the present stone castle in 1283.
• Banded coloured stone and polygonal towers were meant to recall imperial Rome as well as to hold north Wales.
• Edward II was born here on 25 April 1284, and the castle later staged the investitures of 1911 and 1 July 1969.
• Madog ap Llywelyn took and burned the unfinished work in 1294, and the Glyndŵr Rising did not take the castle.
• A dig from January 2019 into 2021 found first-century Roman pottery, tile and animal bone in the lower ward.
• The upper King's Gate reopened in April 2023 after a £5 million scheme that added a lift to a roof deck.

## Visiting

The castle is open from 9.30am to 5pm from 1 March to 30 June. It is open from 9.30am to 5pm from 1 September to 31 October. It is open from 9.30am to 6pm from 1 July to 31 August. It is open from 10.00am to 4pm from 1 November to 28 February.
Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. The castle is closed on 24, 25 and 26 December and on 1 January. The monument closes at short notice in extreme weather. Adult admission from 1 September 2026 to 31 March 2027 is £14.90.
The senior ticket for a visitor aged 65 or over is £13.40. The junior ticket, for ages 5 to 17, and the student ticket are £10.40, and a student must show a photo card with the ticket. The family ticket for 2 adults and up to 3 children is £47.70. The family ticket for 1 adult and up to 3 children is £32.80.
Members need no ticket. A disabled visitor and one companion need no ticket. Children under 5 need no ticket. A £1 ticket is sold to people on Universal Credit and other named benefits.
Blue Light Card holders and members of the armed forces and veterans receive 10 percent off individual admission, and that reduction is not available on an online ticket. Online tickets cost 5 percent less and are non-refundable. Tickets may be bought on arrival. Smoking is not allowed.
Climbing on the interpretation displays or over the safety barriers is not allowed. Touching the plants, or letting a dog eat them, is not allowed. From April to October only assistance dogs are allowed to enter. From 1 November to 28 February other dogs on short leads are allowed to enter the ground floor.
An audio guide may be bought on arrival in the visitor centre, and members receive it without a further charge. The museum inside the castle is included in the admission ticket. Visitors who may need help to leave the upper King's Gate in an emergency should book in advance, because only two people can be helped at one time. Admission does not include the King's Gate café, because that café is closed.
The pop-up stall is open daily, and from 1 September its opening hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday. School groups book in advance for a free self-led education visit.

## History

Caernarfon Castle stands on a peninsula in Gwynedd where the River Seiont meets the Menai Strait. Its Welsh name, Castell Caernarfon, has been used in English as well since 2024, and it means the stronghold in the land over against Anglesey. The stone fortress begun in 1283 was the administrative centre of north Wales, a royal residence, and a defence, built together with a walled town and a quay.

A Roman fort, Segontium, lies on the outskirts of the town, near the river. The medieval castle is a later work on the peninsula, not that fort. In 1088, after Robert of Rhuddlan was killed, Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester, raised a motte and bailey here, with a timber palisade and probably a wooden keep. The Welsh took Gwynedd in 1115, and both Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd stayed at the castle.

The Norman motte was later swallowed by the stone walls. A dig on its summit in 1969 found no medieval occupation, so any earlier trace on the mound had been removed. Edward I, king from 1272 to 1307, conquered Gwynedd in a war that began on 22 March 1282. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was killed on 11 December 1282, placed both at Cilmeri and at the Battle of Orewin Bridge.

His brother Dafydd held out until Dolbadarn fell in May 1283, and he was captured in June 1283 and executed the next year. Edward then began the castles at Harlech and Caernarfon. James of Saint George is usually treated as the master mason, though John Goodall gives the design to Walter of Hereford from the outset. A ditch separating the site from the town is recorded on 24 June 1283, with a timber stockade around the works.

Edward and Eleanor of Castile arrived on 11 or 12 July 1283 and stayed for more than a month. The Statute of Rhuddlan, on 3 March 1284, made the place a borough and the administrative centre of north Wales. Edward II was born on 25 April 1284. His life places the birth in the castle, while the castle's own history gives the same birth as tradition, and a later story that the baby spoke no English is known only from the sixteenth century.

In 1301 he was made prince of Wales, with the earldom of Chester and lands across north Wales. The town walls were mostly complete by 1285 and joined the castle. By 1292 about £12,000 had been spent, mainly on the southern front. From 1284 to 1330 the castle and town walls cost between £20,000 and £25,000, while another account puts the castle, walls and quay at £25,000 over 47 years.

The King's Gate and the Queen's Gate were left unfinished at the back, and many inner buildings were never raised. In September 1294 Madog ap Llywelyn took the town and the unfinished castle and burned what would burn. The English were rebuilding the town walls by November 1295, at a cost of £1,195. Madog was captured in late July or early August 1295 and was still alive in London in 1305.

Walter of Hereford then led the northern work, with a pause during the Scottish war, and Henry of Ellerton carried it on after Walter's death in 1309 until the accounts end in 1330. Beaumaris was begun in the same crisis, dated both to April 1295 and to the period after the revolt was crushed. The castle is a figure of eight, with an upper ward to the east and a lower ward to the west. Polygonal towers and banded coloured stone distinguish it from the round-towered castles of the same reign.

The Eagle Tower, probably for the justiciar Otton de Grandson, had three turrets once crowned with eagles, and a water gate at its foot. The design has been read as an image of the walls of Constantinople and of the dream of Magnus Maximus, and also as a claim to Roman and Arthurian authority in Britain. A great hall, given a measurement of 30.5 metres, stood on the south of the lower ward, and only foundations remain. Had the interior been finished, a household of several hundred could have lived here.

The castle stayed garrisoned for two centuries and was in effect the capital of north Wales. In the Glyndŵr Rising it was besieged in 1401, when the Battle of Tuthill was fought nearby, and again in 1403 and 1404 with French support. A garrison of about thirty held it, and an attack in 1403 nearly took it. Owain Glyndŵr took Harlech and Aberystwyth, not this castle.

After 1485 the castle decayed, and by 1620 only the Eagle Tower and the King's Gate kept their roofs. In the English Civil War the Royalists held it through three sieges. John Byron surrendered it in 1646, the last fighting the castle saw. An order of 1660 to dismantle the castle and town walls was abandoned.

From the 1870s Llewellyn Turner repaired and partly rebuilt the fabric, and from 1908 the state maintained it. David Lloyd George, constable from 1908 to 1945, insisted that the 1911 investiture of the future Edward VIII be held here. On 1 July 1969 Charles, later Charles III, was invested in a televised ceremony that was already controversial in Wales. The castle and town walls were inscribed in 1986 with Conwy, Beaumaris and Harlech as one World Heritage Site.

The whole group covers 7.27 hectares, and the Caernarfon component is recorded at 1.2 hectares. It is Grade I listed, designated on 31 March 1983, and more than 155,000 people came in 2024 to 2025. A dig from January 2019 to early 2021 found first-century Roman pottery, tile and animal bone, plus signs of use just before 1283 and stone foundations in the lower ward. In April 2023 a £5 million scheme opened the upper King's Gate, with a lift to a roof deck.

## Photographs

- [This is a photo of listed building number — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Castell_Caernarfon_yn_y_cyfnos_yn_2023_-_Castell_Caernarfon%2C_Gwynedd%2C_Wales_at_Dusk_-_2023_10.png)
- [Teitl Cymraeg/Welsh title: Gorymdaith brotest yn erbyn bomiau niwclear o Gaernarfon i Fangor Ffotograffydd/Photographer: Geoff Charles (1909-2002) — Geoff Charles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/%22Ban_the_Bomb%22_march_from_Caernarfon_to_Bangor_%285470501687%29.jpg)
- [Teitl Cymraeg/Welsh title: Gorymdaith "Ban the Bomb" o Gaernarfon i Fangor. Ffotograffydd/Photographer: Geoff Charles (1909-2002) Dyddiad/Date: 22/03/1962 — Geoff Charles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/%22Ban_the_Bomb%22_march_from_Caernarfon_to_Bangor_%2816544220270%29.jpg)
- [1GL benchmark & bolt on Caernarfon Castle, Caernarfon — Meirion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/1GL_benchmark_%5E_bolt_on_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Caernarfon_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2054726.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower, Queen's Gate — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower%2C_Queen%27s_Gate_Caernarfon_20240529_0579_DxO.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240528_0424_DxO.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0036_DxO.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0203_DxO.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0571_DxO.jpg)
- [Caernarfon: Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower — Tilman2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/3814_Caernarfon_Castle%2C_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0578_DxO.jpg)

## Sources

- [Caernarfon Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caernarfon_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I) — Wikipedia
- [Edward II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II) — Wikipedia
- [Madog ap Llywelyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madog_ap_Llywelyn) — Wikipedia
- [Glyndŵr Rising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynd%C5%B5r_Rising) — Wikipedia
- [English Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) — Wikipedia
- [A. J. Taylor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Taylor) — Wikipedia
- [Charles III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_III) — Wikipedia
- [David Lloyd George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lloyd_George) — Wikipedia
- [James of Saint George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_of_Saint_George) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn ap Gruffudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_ap_Gruffudd) — Wikipedia
- [Castell Caernarfon](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/castell-caernarfon) — Cadw
- [Largest ever excavation at Castell Caernarfon](https://cadw.gov.wales/about-us/news/largest-ever-excavation-castell-caernarfon-offers-new-clues-about-sites-history) — Cadw
- [Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/374/) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- [Inscription of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd](https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/3806/) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- [Areas of Caernarfon Castle opened after a 5 million pound investment](https://media.service.gov.wales/news/now-open-areas-of-caernarfon-castle-that-have-not-been-accessed-for-centuries-thanks-to-gbp-5m-investment) — Welsh Government
- [Caernarfon Castle gatehouse reopening](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/27/caernarfon-castles-5m-revamp-takes-its-story-beyond-english-imperialism) — The Guardian
- [Castell Caernarfon yn y cyfnos yn 2023 - Castell Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales at Dusk - 2023 10.png](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Caernarfon_yn_y_cyfnos_yn_2023_-_Castell_Caernarfon,_Gwynedd,_Wales_at_Dusk_-_2023_10.png) — Wikimedia Commons
- ["Ban the Bomb" march from Caernarfon to Bangor (5470501687).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Ban_the_Bomb%22_march_from_Caernarfon_to_Bangor_(5470501687).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- ["Ban the Bomb" march from Caernarfon to Bangor (16544220270).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Ban_the_Bomb%22_march_from_Caernarfon_to_Bangor_(16544220270).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [1GL benchmark ^ bolt on Caernarfon Castle, Caernarfon - geograph.org.uk - 2054726.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1GL_benchmark_%5E_bolt_on_Caernarfon_Castle,_Caernarfon_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2054726.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower, Queen's Gate Caernarfon 20240529 0579 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower,_Queen%27s_Gate_Caernarfon_20240529_0579_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower Caernarfon 20240528 0424 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240528_0424_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower Caernarfon 20240529 0036 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0036_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower Caernarfon 20240529 0203 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0203_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower Caernarfon 20240529 0571 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0571_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [3814 Caernarfon Castle, Black Tower Caernarfon 20240529 0578 DxO.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3814_Caernarfon_Castle,_Black_Tower_Caernarfon_20240529_0578_DxO.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Caernarfon Castle, in Welsh Castell Caernarfon, is a medieval fortress on a peninsula in Gwynedd, north-west Wales, where the River Seiont meets the Menai Strait. The Welsh name is understood as y gaer yn Arfon, the stronghold in the land over against Môn, and Môn is the Welsh name for Anglesey. Since 2024 the Welsh name has been used in English as well. The stone castle that stands there now was begun in 1283 by Edward I after his conquest of Gwynedd. It was built with a new walled town and a quay, and it was meant to be the administrative centre of north Wales as well as a royal residence and a fortress. From the outside it looks nearly complete. Inside, the domestic ranges have gone, and large parts of what was planned were never finished.

The first fortifications in the district were Roman. Their fort, Segontium, stands on the outskirts of the modern town, near the bank of the Seiont, in a sheltered place that could be supplied by river. Little is known of Segontium or of the civilian settlement beside it after Roman forces left Britain in the early fifth century. The castle that Edward later built was not that fort. A separate question, raised by digging inside the later wards, is whether Roman material also lies under the medieval castle itself.

After the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror turned to Wales. The Domesday survey of 1086 treats the Norman Robert of Rhuddlan as nominally in command of the whole of northern Wales. Robert was killed by the Welsh in 1088. His cousin Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester, reasserted Norman control by building three castles: one at an unknown spot in Meirionnydd, one at Aberlleiniog on Anglesey, and one at Caernarfon. The Caernarfon castle of that generation occupied the peninsula between the Seiont and the strait. It was a motte and bailey, with a timber palisade and earthworks, and the mound was probably crowned by a wooden keep. That motte was later absorbed into the Edwardian castle. The original bailey has not been fixed; it may have lain to the north-east of the mound. Excavation on top of the motte in 1969 found no trace of medieval occupation, which suggests that whatever had been there was removed. The Welsh recovered Gwynedd in 1115, and the castle passed to the Welsh princes. Documents written at the castle show that Llywelyn the Great, and later Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, stayed there from time to time.

Edward I was born at Westminster on the night of 17 to 18 June 1239, the eldest son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, and he was king of England from 1272 until his death on 7 July 1307. He was also Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 to 1306 he held Gascony as duke of Aquitaine. Before the crown he was called the Lord Edward. He grew to about 6 feet 2 inches, or 188 centimetres, and the nickname Longshanks came from that height. On 1 November 1254 he married Eleanor of Castile. He was held by the barons after the Battle of Lewes, escaped, and defeated Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. He joined the Ninth Crusade in 1270, learned of his father's death on the way home in 1272, reached England in 1274, and was crowned at Westminster Abbey. In 1273, returning from crusade, he visited Savoy. On 25 June 1273 he was at Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche, where he is thought to have met the Savoyard master mason later called James of Saint George.

The war that produced the present castle had a longer preface. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd from 1255, took the title prince of Wales in 1258 and was recognised as such by Henry III in the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267. The English crown had refused the title before that. In the Second Barons' War he negotiated with Simon de Montfort, and the Treaty of Pipton of 22 June 1265 offered him recognition in return for a large payment, but Montfort was killed at Evesham and Llywelyn took no part in that battle. The Treaty of Montgomery then recognised his conquests in the Four Cantrefs of Perfeddwlad and his title, at a price of 24,000 marks. His rule was heavy-handed on the March. In 1272 Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, defeated him and drove him out of south-east Wales. A failed attempt on his life followed. The chief suspects, his brother Dafydd and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, fled to the English court. Llywelyn refused homage, citing the shelter given to his enemies and the continuing border war. He also planned to marry Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort the Elder, and he was suspected of keeping a Montfortian spy, Nicholas Waltham, at Edward's court.

In November 1276 Edward I declared war. Mortimer, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, opened the operations. In July 1277 Edward invaded with 15,500 men, of whom 9,000 were Welsh. There was no great battle. By the Treaty of Aberconwy, signed by Llywelyn on 9 November 1277 and also placed simply in November 1277, Llywelyn kept Gwynedd and the title prince of Wales, paid a fine of 50,000 marks, and lost the wider homage he had claimed. The Llŷn was given to his brother Owain, and the Perfeddwlad to Dafydd. War returned in 1282. Welsh leaders treated it as a struggle over national identity and Welsh law, after English legal devices had been used to take land from prominent Welsh owners. Edward treated it as a conquest that would end what he called the malice of the Welsh. Dafydd, disappointed by his reward in 1277, began the rising, and Llywelyn joined him. Early in the war the Welsh had the advantage. In June, Gloucester was defeated at the Battle of Llandeilo Fawr. On 6 November, while Archbishop John Peckham was negotiating, Luke de Tany, Edward's commander on Anglesey, crossed a pontoon bridge and was ambushed at the Battle of Moel-y-don. On 11 December 1282 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was killed. One account places the death in an ambush at Cilmeri. Another places it at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, where he was drawn into a trap. The castle history dates the outbreak of this war to 22 March 1282 and the same death to 11 December.

Dafydd ap Gruffudd, also written Dafydd ap Gruffydd, carried on the fight. The castle history says the war closed in May 1283 when Dolbadarn, his last castle, was taken, after Edward had marched through the north, taken Dolwyddelan, and founded Conwy. Edward I's life says the conquest of Gwynedd was completed by Dafydd's capture in June 1283, above Abergwyngregyn at Bera Mountain, with his family. He was condemned at Shrewsbury and executed as a traitor the following year, and Edward ordered his head set on London Bridge. Llywelyn's daughter Gwenllian was taken in 1283 and placed in Sempringham Priory in 1284. She died there in 1337. Shortly after Dolbadarn fell, Edward began the castles at Harlech and Caernarfon. The castles at Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech were the most imposing of their time in Wales, and together with his other new castles they fixed English rule on the ground.

The master mason usually credited with the design is James of Saint George, also Master James of St George, a Savoyard whose dates are given as about 1230 to 1309. His life says he was largely responsible for designing Conwy, Harlech and Caernarfon, all begun in 1283, and Beaumaris, begun in 1295. The castle history is more cautious and says he was probably the master mason. John Goodall has argued that Walter of Hereford was responsible for the design of Caernarfon from the start. The historian A. J. Taylor, born Arnold Joseph Taylor in London on 24 July 1911, proposed in 1950 that the Savoyard Jacques de Saint-Georges and Master James of Saint George were one man, after comparing garderobes, windows and town walls in Wales and Savoy. Taylor joined the ministry in 1935, served in wartime intelligence, and became inspector of ancient monuments for Wales, with the Edwardian castles of the north in his care. In 1953 he wrote Caernarvon Castle and Town Walls, the official guidebook, reissued with revisions in 1964. He was chief inspector from 1961 until he retired in 1972, and he died at Compton in Surrey on 24 October 2002.

James's own career explains why Edward hired him. He worked with his father at Yverdon, then for Peter II and Philip I of Savoy, including the palace-castle at Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche. English records call him Magistri Jacobi de Sancto Georgio on 8 November 1280. In April 1278 he was already being sent to Wales to order the works of the castles, and he supervised Rhuddlan and the canalisation of the Clwyd before Flint. Around 1285 he was Master of the Royal Works in Wales at 3 shillings a day, with control of Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech. He was constable of Harlech from 3 July 1290 to 14 December 1293, not of Caernarfon. He died in 1309. His wife Ambrosia is not recorded as receiving a pension, and he was survived by two sons, Giles and Tassin. From about September 1298 he was also with Edward in Scotland, at Linlithgow in 1302 and at the siege of Stirling in 1304. Beaumaris, which Marc Morris called his most perfectly conceived castle, was still unfinished at his death.

Work at Caernarfon is first recorded on 24 June 1283, when a ditch had been cut to separate the castle site from the town to the north. A bretagium, a timber stockade, protected the site while the permanent walls rose. Timber came from as far as Liverpool. Stone was quarried on Anglesey and around the town. Hundreds of workers dug the moat and the wall foundations. The site spread into the town, houses were cleared, and the residents were not compensated until three years later. While the stone foundations were laid, timber-framed rooms were put up for Edward I and Eleanor of Castile. They reached Caernarfon on 11 or 12 July 1283 and stayed for more than a month. Work went on through the winter of 1283 to 1284. How much was finished is uncertain. Arnold Taylor suggested that the Eagle Tower may have been complete when the king and queen returned at Easter 1284.

The Statute of Rhuddlan, enacted on 3 March 1284, made Caernarfon a borough and the administrative centre of north Wales. One account calls that territory the county of Gwynedd and another notes that Gwynedd was not a county. Edward I's life describes the statute as incorporating the principality into England, with sheriffs, English criminal law, and Welsh custom left in some property disputes. New towns such as Flint, Aberystwyth and Rhuddlan were settled with English migrants, and the local Welsh were barred from living in them. Caernarfon was defended in 1284 by forty men, more than the thirty at Conwy or at Harlech. Even in peace the guard here was kept at between twenty and forty, because of the castle's importance.

Edward II was born on 25 April 1284. His own life states that the birth was at Caernarfon Castle, less than a year after the conquest, and that the king probably chose the place because it mattered to the Welsh, because it carried a Roman imperial association, and because it was the centre of the new northern administration. The castle history presents the same date and place as tradition. He was the fourth son. His brothers John and Henry had already died, and Alphonso died in August 1284, so this child became the heir. Prophets of the time called him a new King Arthur. A famous later story says Edward I promised the Welsh a prince born in Wales who could not speak a word of English, and then showed them the baby. That tale can be traced only to the sixteenth century. David Powel, a clergyman of that century, gives the story, and there is no evidence for it. The castle history calls it possibly apocryphal.

The baby was first nursed by Mariota, or Mary Maunsel, until she fell ill, and then by Alice de Leygrave. A household under the clerk Giles of Oudenarde was set up for him. His mother was soon in Gascony with the king, so he barely knew her. In 1293 William of Blyborough took charge of the household. Dominican friars, invited by Eleanor in 1290, probably gave him his religious teaching, and Guy Ferre was his magister for riding and arms. He spoke Anglo-Norman French in daily life, with some English and possibly Latin. He liked horses, greyhounds, music, Welsh music and the crwth. He did not joust. In 1290 the Treaty of Birgham had promised him, then six, to Margaret of Norway, heir to Scotland, but Margaret died that year. Eleanor of Castile died soon after, and the boy inherited Ponthieu. In the spring of 1301, at Lincoln, Edward I made him prince of Wales, with the earldom of Chester and lands across north Wales, hoping the grant would pacify the country and give the son an income. He took homage from his Welsh subjects. From then on the title has customarily gone to the monarch's eldest son. He became king in 1307, was deposed in January 1327, and died at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327. A statue of him was later set in a niche over the town entrance of the King's Gate.

By 1285 the town walls were mostly complete, and they were joined to the castle. Spending on the fabric became negligible from 1289, and the accounts end in 1292. Edward's castle-building in Wales cost £80,000 between 1277 and 1304, and £95,000 between 1277 and 1329. By 1292 about £12,000 had been spent on the Caernarfon castle and town walls, and the southern front was the furthest advanced. The southern wall and the town walls already made a circuit, so the northern front of the castle was left until later. From 1284 to 1330, when the accounts end, between £20,000 and £25,000 was spent on the castle and the town walls. Another telling of the same project says the castle, the walls and the quay together took 47 years and cost £25,000. The sum dwarfed the cost of Dover and of Château Gaillard. What remains is substantially the Edwardian work. The rear of the King's Gate, the town entrance, and the rear of the Queen's Gate, the south-eastern entrance, were left unfinished, and foundations inside the wards show buildings that were never raised.

In 1294 Wales rose under Madog ap Llywelyn. He was the son of Llywelyn ap Maredudd, the last Welsh lord of Meirionydd, who had lost that land in 1256 for opposing Llywelyn ap Gruffudd at the Battle of Bryn Derwin, lived in exile on an English pension, returned to the Welsh side by June 1262, and died in a skirmish in April 1263. Madog, perhaps born in exile, received substantial gifts from Edward I in 1277 and in 1278 sued the prince of Wales for his father's cantref. After Llywelyn's death in 1282 he returned to Gwynedd and was given lands in Anglesey. He was a distant kinsman of the dead prince, of a junior branch of the house of Aberffraw. On Michaelmas, 29 September 1294, he put himself at the head of a national revolt against the new royal administrators and against a tax of one fifteenth on movable goods. There is no evidence that the aim was to restore the old principality, but in one land grant issued during the rising he used the title prince of Wales. The rising had been planned for months, and attacks began on the same day across Wales. Cynan ap Maredudd, Maelgwn ap Rhys, and Morgan ap Maredudd of Gwynllwg led the attacks in the middle and south. The leaders hoped Edward and his army would already have sailed for France. Bad weather held the fleet, and Edward cancelled the French campaign.

Caernarfon was the seat of administration in Gwynedd and a symbol of English power, so it was a target. Madog's forces took the town in September and badly damaged the town walls. The castle itself had only a ditch and a temporary barricade. It was taken quickly, and anything that would burn was set on fire. Fire ran through the town. Castell y Bere was occupied and afterwards burnt. Hawarden, Ruthin and Denbigh were occupied. Criccieth was besieged for several months, and so was Harlech, which at one point was held by 37 men. In the south, Morlais was taken, Builth was besieged for six weeks, half the town of Caerphilly was burnt while the castle held, and Kenfig was sacked. On 11 November Henry de Lacy, lord of Denbigh, was ambushed outside that town and routed. Reginald de Grey held Flint and Rhuddlan, though Flint endured a long siege. In December 1294 Edward led an army into the north, through Wrexham, Denbigh and Abergele, and reached Conwy shortly before Christmas. He was ambushed, lost his baggage, and was shut in Conwy until his fleet relieved him in 1295. The town of Conwy was burnt.

The decisive fight was the Battle of Maes Moydog in Powys on 5 March 1295. An army under the Earl of Warwick surprised Madog's men. The Welsh formed a schiltron, a hedgehog of pikes, and beat off a cavalry charge, but English arrows broke them, and many drowned in a swollen river during the pursuit. Madog escaped. Ynyr Fychan of Nannau captured him and handed him to John de Havering in Snowdonia in late July or early August 1295. He was taken to London and was still alive in 1305. He left two sons, Maredudd, who died about 1334, and Hywel, who died about 1352. Edward answered the revolt with punitive ordinances, tighter limits on Welsh civil rights, and, in one account, the taking of 200 hostages. Rules against Welshmen bearing arms or living in the new boroughs are thought to date from this time. The English moved to recover Caernarfon in the summer of 1295. By November they were refortifying the town. Rebuilding the town walls was put first, and £1,195, nearly half the sum first spent on those walls, finished the job two months ahead of schedule. In 1295 a letter to the Earl of Chester demanded 100 masons, experienced in the king's work at Caernarfon, to come at once with their tools and to do what Edmund, the king's brother, ordered.

Attention then returned to the castle, where work had stopped in 1292. James of Saint George was by then overseeing the new castle at Beaumaris on Anglesey. One account says that work began once the rebellion had been put down. His own life dates the start at Beaumaris to April 1295, which falls before Madog's capture in the late summer. Walter of Hereford took over as master mason for the new phase at Caernarfon, which is the point on which Goodall's argument about the original design also turns. By the end of 1301 a further £4,500 had been spent, mainly on the northern wall and towers. The accounts from November 1301 to September 1304 are missing. The gap may mark a pause while labour went north for the Scottish war. Walter of Hereford was in Carlisle in October 1300 and stayed on the Scottish works until the autumn of 1304, when building at Caernarfon resumed. He died in 1309. His deputy, Henry of Ellerton, became master mason. Construction then continued at a steady pace until 1330. A plan of the castle marks the work of 1283 to 1292, essentially the southern side, separately from the work of 1295 to 1323. The accounts themselves run on to 1330.

The plan is a narrow enclosure, roughly a figure of eight, divided into an upper ward on the east and a lower ward on the west. The eastern ward was to hold the royal rooms, which were never finished. A range of fortified buildings was supposed to divide the two wards, and that range was never built. Polygonal towers stand along the curtain so that flanking fire could cover the walls. Battlements crowned the walls and towers. Firing galleries were built along the southern face and were intended on the north, where they were never made. Allen Brown, a military historian, called the result one of the most formidable concentrations of fire-power in the Middle Ages. Most of the northern towers have four storeys including a basement. The Eagle Tower, at the western corner, is the grandest. It has three turrets, once topped by statues of eagles. It contained grand lodgings and was probably built for Sir Otton de Grandson, also written Otto de Grandson, the first justiciar of Wales. A water gate in its basement let visitors come up the Seiont into the castle. Water was drawn from a well in the Well Tower.

The banded masonry, in stones of different colours, and the polygonal rather than round towers, set Caernarfon apart from the other Edwardian castles. Arnold Taylor argued that the design represented the walls of Constantinople, and that Edward was claiming a Roman imperial authority, prompted by the Welsh tale Breudwyt Macsen Wledig, the dream of Magnus Maximus. In that dream Maximus saw a fort, the fairest that man ever saw, in a city at the mouth of a river, in a mountainous country, opposite an island. Edward read the dream as Segontium. A medieval chronicle says that during the building of the castle and the town the body of the emperor Magnus Maximus was found, and that Edward ordered it reburied in a local church. The eagle carvings would have reinforced the same story. Abigail Wheatley has argued that the design did assert Edward's authority, but that it drew on Roman sites in Britain and on an Arthurian claim, rather than on Constantinople alone. Edward's interest in Arthur is documented elsewhere: in 1278 he visited Glastonbury to open what was believed to be the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere, he took what was called Arthur's crown from Llywelyn, and he held Round Table feasts in 1284 and 1302.

The two gates are passages between flanking towers. Had the King's Gate been finished, a visitor would have crossed two drawbridges, passed five doors and six portcullises, turned a right angle, and all the while been under arrow loops and murder holes. Arnold Taylor judged that no building in Britain shows the strength of a medieval fortification more strikingly than this twin-towered gate. The Queen's Gate is unusual because its entrance is above the outside ground. The older motte had raised the interior, and a stone ramp, now gone, would have climbed to the door. Inside the curtain, only foundations survive. The royal lodgings were planned for the upper ward. The kitchens stood immediately west of the King's Gate, and their slight foundations led Taylor to think they were not heavily built. The great hall lay against the south side of the lower ward. A measurement of 30.5 metres, or 100 feet, is given for it, without a statement of which dimension that figure is. Only the footings remain. Had the castle been finished as intended, it could have housed a royal household of several hundred people.

For about two centuries after the conquest, Edward's arrangements for governing Wales stayed in place. The castle was kept garrisoned, and Caernarfon was in effect the capital of north Wales. The most important offices were usually closed to Welsh people. That tension broke again in the Glyndŵr Rising of 1400 to 1415. Owain Glyndŵr, descended from several Welsh royal lines, was proclaimed prince of Wales on 16 September 1400 by a small company that included his eldest son, his brothers-in-law, and the dean of St Asaph. The immediate quarrel was with a neighbouring English lord, Reginald Grey of Ruthin, over land, and it came in the year Henry IV replaced Richard II. On 18 September Ruthin was attacked. Denbigh, Rhuddlan, Flint, Hawarden and Holt followed, then Oswestry on 22 September, and Powis Castle and Welshpool. In 1401 much of the north and the centre went over to him. Henry IV named Henry Percy, called Hotspur, to restore order. An amnesty in March 1401 excluded Owain and his cousins Rhys and Gwilym ap Tudur. At Mynydd Hyddgen, in May or June 1401, a few hundred of Owain's men were charged by about 1,500 English and Flemish settlers from Pembrokeshire, and Owain's men reportedly killed 200. In October 1401 Henry IV came through the centre of the country and struck Strata Florida Abbey.

Caernarfon was besieged in 1401. In November that year the Battle of Tuthill was fought nearby between the castle's defenders and the besiegers. In 1403 and 1404 the town and castle were besieged again, this time by Welsh troops with French support, and the garrison was about thirty. The rising's own narrative places a further attack, with French help, in the north in 1403, and says the castle was almost taken. In answer, Henry of Monmouth, the future Henry V, then about sixteen, burned Owain's houses at Glyndyfrdwy and Sycharth. Hotspur rebelled in July 1403 and was killed at Shrewsbury on 22 July. In the summer of 1404 Owain took Harlech and Aberystwyth, held court at Harlech, and was said to have called a parliament at Machynlleth. He announced a return to the laws of Hywel Dda, an independent Welsh church, and two universities. In May 1404 his envoys made a treaty with Charles VI of France, and in 1405 a French army landed in Wales. English resistance in the west was reduced to scattered castles, walled towns and fortified houses. Caernarfon was not among the castles he took. The rising faded by 1415. The Tudors' accession to the English throne in 1485 eased the hostility between Welsh and English, and castles that had been centres of occupation mattered less. In 1538 many Welsh castles were reported to be badly ruined and far decayed for lack of timely repair.

At Caernarfon the town walls and the castle walls stayed sound, while roofs and timber failed. By 1620, of seven towers and two gatehouses, only the Eagle Tower and the King's Gate still had roofs. The domestic buildings had been stripped of glass and iron. Even so, the defences were strong enough to be used again in the English Civil War. That war, also called the Great Rebellion, was fought between Royalists and Parliamentarians from 1642 to 1651, inside the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Wales, already annexed to the kingdom of England, shared the same political crisis, and the Royalist geographical strength included Wales and the west. The first war ended in June 1646 with the king in custody. Charles I was executed in January 1649. The monarchy was restored in 1660. Caernarfon Castle was held for the king and was besieged three times. The constable, John Byron, 1st Baron Byron, surrendered it to Parliamentarian forces in 1646. That was the last time the castle saw fighting. In 1660 an order was given to dismantle the castle and the town walls. The work was stopped early and may never have begun.

The castle was then neglected until the late nineteenth century. From the 1870s the government paid for repairs. The deputy constable, Llewellyn Turner, oversaw them, and he often restored and rebuilt rather than only conserving the old stone. Steps, battlements and roofs were repaired. The moat on the north side was cleared of post-medieval buildings that were said to spoil the view, despite local protest. From 1908 the Office of Works and its successors kept the castle because of its historic importance. In 1959 modern buildings around the Eagle Tower were demolished to clear it. John Speed's map of 1610 shows the castle at the south end of the town. J. M. W. Turner painted the castle between 1830 and 1835, and Joseph Farrington painted it in the eighteenth century.

In 1911 the castle was used for the investiture of Edward, prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, the eldest son of George V. The ceremony was held there at the insistence of David Lloyd George, then chancellor of the exchequer, a Welshman raised in Caernarfonshire. His life spells the county Carnarvonshire and says he was raised at Llanystumdwy after his father died in Manchester in 1864. He was born on 17 January 1863, qualified as a solicitor, and on 10 April 1890 won the Caernarvon Boroughs seat, which he held for 55 years. He was chancellor from 1908 to 1915, prime minister from 1916 to 1922, and the first Welshman in that office. He was constable of this castle from 1908 to 1945. On 12 February 1945 he was created Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. He died on 26 March 1945 and was buried beside the Dwyfor at Llanystumdwy. Before 1835 the constable had also been mayor of the town. Later constables were John Henry Puleston from 1890 to 1908, Lord Harlech from 1945 to 1963, the Earl of Snowdon from 1963 to 2017, and, from 2018, Edmund Seymour Bailey, lord lieutenant of Gwynedd.

The precedent of 1911 was repeated on 1 July 1969, when Charles was invested as prince of Wales in a televised ceremony and was crowned here by his mother. He had been created prince of Wales and earl of Chester on 26 July 1958. The investiture was controversial in Wales amid a rise in Welsh nationalist feeling. He acceded as Charles III in 2022, at the age of 73, the oldest person to take the British throne, and his coronation followed in 2023. On 9 September 2022, in his first speech as king, he announced that his elder son, William, would be prince of Wales. That decision was disputed in this town. A council in Gwynedd controlled by Plaid Cymru called for the title to be banned.

The castle has been Crown property since it was built. It is now cared for by the Welsh Government's historic environment service. In 1986 the castle and its town walls were inscribed, together with Conwy Castle and its town walls and the castles of Beaumaris and Harlech, as the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd, a World Heritage Site, at the tenth session of the committee. The serial property covers 7.27 hectares. The Caernarfon castle and town walls are recorded as a component of 1.2 hectares, with no buffer zone. The group is described as the finest late thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century military architecture in Europe, directed by James of St George, and as unusual because the building accounts survive. Some reconstruction of the late nineteenth century at Caernarfon is noted, and conservation for the last century has been described as conserve-as-found. The castle is also a Grade I listed building, designated on 31 March 1983. The Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum is housed inside the castle, and entry to it is included with admission. In 2015 a new entrance pavilion, designed by Donald Insall Associates, was built. More than 155,000 people visited in 2024 to 2025.

The largest excavation yet undertaken here ran from January 2019 and was reported as finished on 3 February 2021, with the post-excavation work placed from March 2021. A team from the University of Salford, directed by Ian Miller, dug in the lower ward and recorded the King's Gate by laser scan. They found sherds of first-century Roman pottery, with tile and animal bone, and took that as evidence that the ground was used in the Roman period, long before 1283. They also found evidence of use immediately before Edward's castle, which adds weight to the older suggestion of a motte and bailey. Newly found stone foundations raised the question of whether the markers laid out in the lower ward, showing where thirteenth-century or fourteenth-century buildings had stood, needed to be redrawn. A news account of the same dig said the castle had once been thought to stand on the site of a Roman fort, which is a different claim from the identification of Segontium on the outskirts. In February 2021 the analysis of the finds was still to come. Later accounts of the gatehouse works confirm that the same classes of Roman material, and buried floor levels, bedrock, and historic floor finishes, were uncovered while the new drains and rooms were designed. The 1969 dig on the motte remains a separate result: no medieval occupation on the top of the mound.

A conservation and access scheme for the King's Gate was described in 2021 as a £4 million programme due to finish in 2022. It was completed in April 2023, announced on 27 April, after three years of work, at a cost of £5 million. One account says it was a year late and £1 million over budget because of Covid and because construction prices rose. Of the £5 million, £1.04 million came from the European Regional Development Fund. A lift now reaches a roof deck and the upper floors of the gatehouse, which had not been seen close to for centuries. One account believes it is the first lift of this kind in such a gatehouse in the United Kingdom. Another describes it as a first for any similar World Heritage site in the United Kingdom. New floors, a Changing Places room, and interpretation about the stonemasons, weavers, bursar and other workers were added. The display treats Welsh and English craftspeople as having worked on the medieval building together. An imagined shattered figure of Edward carries a line of the sixteenth-century poet Dafydd Trefor asking where Edward is, and saying that he is silent in his grave. A panel notes that a Welsh flag flies over the turrets and that Wales again has its own parliament. The upper levels of the King's Gate can now be reached by that lift or by steep stairs. During the works the public entrance was moved for a time to the Water Gate at the foot of the Eagle Tower. The castle remained open.

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