Castle Park’s grassy slopes rise and dip for a reason. Beneath them lie medieval streets, chunks of the city wall and the rubble of nearly everything the Luftwaffe destroyed here in a single day in November 1940.

Before that, this was Bristol’s busy heart. A Norman castle stood here from 1088 and lasted some 500 years, until Cromwell had it pulled down. Thrifty locals recycled the stones into houses and turned its underground chambers into cellars. By 1940 the neighbourhood held at least ten pubs, a school, a hospital and two churches. The shell of one, St Peter’s, now stands as a memorial to the 1,299 Bristolians killed in the Blitz.

VoiceMap’s tours read the park like an archaeological dig, pointing out the moat, a surviving sally port and St Edith’s Well, probably Bristol’s first water source, while a pub tour traces three centuries of brewing on the opposite bank.