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Within the studiously collected and staged environment of a museum and the open air majesty of a monument or castle Cornwall exceeds all visitor expectation.
Tin is a metal that has been in demand for thousands of years and as Cornwall is one of the few places in Europe with substantial deposits it became both wealthy and a target for invasion. This is why there are so many ruins of ancient hill forts and cliff top castles from medieval to Tudor times dotted across the county.
The castle Cornwall is most famous for is Tintagel Castle. Its ruins are steeped in myth and mystery as legend says that this place was once the home of the Queen of Cornwall and the birthplace of King Arthur. And when archaeologists found that this had in fact been the site of a medieval Celtic castle Cornwall once again became a Mecca for those keen to discover more about the fabled king. There’s even a cave nearby called Merlin’s cave after the great sorcerer of Arthurian legend. The castle’s ruins are to be found on Tintagel Island, which was actually a peninsular jutting out into the Celtic Sea that has been cut off by the ocean waters, and thanks to the English Heritage it is now a popular tourist attraction.
Two further not-to-miss attractions of note are Bodmin Jail on the edge of Bodmin moor which now lies in partial ruin, but offers an excellent, if ghoulish, insight into the criminal culture of Cornwall’s past; and the National Maritime Museum Cornwall which is the country’s foremost museum for small boats and offers visitors a view of Cornish maritime history of which there has been a substantial amount over the last thousand years.
