Chester

Roman walls enclose a city where Tudor-fronted galleries float above street-level arcades, creating a double-decker high street that has baffled and delighted visitors since the Middle Ages. Chester is a city built in layers — Roman, medieval, Tudor, Victorian — each visible without excavation.

Chester's walls, the most complete in England, follow the Roman circuit for two miles as an elevated walkway around the whole centre. The Rows — continuous first-floor galleries above the street-level shops, recorded since the thirteenth century and found in no other city — make the most atmospheric browsing in England, leaded windows over cobbles, with half the pleasure lying in guessing which black-and-white frontages are genuine Tudor and which exuberant Victorian imitation. The Roman amphitheatre, the largest yet found in Britain, lies half-excavated outside the walls; the cathedral, a Benedictine foundation of 1092, keeps choir carvings of exceptional quality; and the Roodee below the walls has run horse races since 1539, the oldest working racecourse in England. The Dee slides beneath it all toward Wales, whose border shaped the city's defensive, prosperous character.