Cardiff Castle sits at the city's heart, but its walls contain about 2,000 years of contradictions.

The Romans planted a fort here in the first century AD, close enough to the River Taff to move troops by water. The Normans added a keep. Then, in 1865, an eighteen-year-old marquess met an eccentric architect named William Burges, and what followed was one of Victorian Britain's most extravagant acts of self-indulgence: a Gothic fantasy with rooftop gardens, seasonal smoking rooms and a banqueting hall built for six weeks of annual use.

The castle was donated to Cardiff in 1947. It is now open to the public, its ornate interiors a testament to coal wealth spent with theatrical enthusiasm.

VoiceMap's tours trace the Bute family's outsized role in Cardiff's transformation, from Roman outpost to capital city, and explore the castle's surprising second life as a Doctor Who filming location, where the library doubled as the TARDIS.