Richard III’s Leicester with Matt Lewis

Few discoveries have rewritten history quite like the unearthing of Richard III beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. On this walking tour with medieval historian Matt Lewis, you’ll retrace the final days of England’s last Plantagenet king, from his ride out to the Battle of Bosworth Field to his return as a fallen monarch. You’ll also untangle five centuries of Tudor propaganda that turned a real king’s scoliosis into a symbol of villainy.

The tour starts outside the King Richard III Visitor Centre, built over the original Greyfriars Friary, where Richard was buried without ceremony in 1485. From there, you’ll walk the footprint of medieval Leicester – streets still following Roman roads – past the imposing sandstone Magazine Gateway, originally built around 1400 as the entrance to the city’s Lancastrian religious precinct. You’ll discover how Henry Tudor displayed Richard’s body on this very ground to signal that York’s reign was finished and the Tudor era had begun.

The route continues through the Turret Gateway into Leicester Castle’s inner bailey, where Richard signed letters just weeks after his coronation, and past St Mary de Castro, where his father was knighted alongside the four-year-old King Henry VI. You’ll stand at Bow Bridge, where legend says a wise woman predicted his fate as he rode out to war. The tour ends at the bronze Richard III Statue in the Cathedral Gardens, steps from Leicester Cathedral, where Richard was finally reburied in 2015 with the dignity denied him in 1485.

On this 45-minute tour, you’ll have a chance to:

• Hear how DNA matched the discovered skeleton to descendants of Richard’s sister, Anne of York
• Visit the site of the Church of the Annunciation, the spiritual heart of the House of Lancaster
• Learn how Richard’s 12,000-strong army was undone by the Stanley family’s last-minute betrayal
• Hear how Tudor writers twisted Richard’s scoliosis into a deformity to justify seizing the throne
• Step inside Leicester Guildhall, a 1390s timber-framed hall whose oak beams survive from Richard’s era
• Discover why St Nicholas’ Church lost its cathedral status to a Viking invasion in 866

This is a story of loyalty, betrayal, and a king whose reputation was stolen for five centuries – and only recently returned.

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