10 hours ago
3
January 22, 2026 — 5:00am
My chilled-out stroll on the old city walls is jolted by a sudden commotion. Someone is barking orders in a booming voice and there are high-pitched shouts and excited screams in response.
Glancing down, I see a neat, landscaped garden with cypress trees, mosaics and stone relics, besides which about 40 children, seven- or eight-year-olds, are wielding toy swords and shields before their “centurion”. Clad in ancient Roman garb, he’s not the only adult I’ll see in period costume in Chester, where historical reenactments, guided walks and immersive activities like this bring the city’s multi-layered past to life.
While its bigger, brasher neighbours – Manchester and Liverpool – generate more noise nowadays, Chester remains the most charming city in England’s north-west. Established as a Roman fortress, known as Deva Victrix, it was a thriving trading port until the late Middle Ages when its River Dee, that ran to the Irish Sea (and Atlantic Ocean) silted up. Despite this, and other setbacks like plagues and sieges, Chester has remained tidy and prosperous, a cut above your average English market town, where storied ruins sit alongside well-preserved buildings from across the centuries, and diverse festivals and trendy newcomers ensure it’s no time warp.
Begun almost 2000 years ago, bolstered in the medieval era, and repaired sporadically since, the sandstone walls are Chester’s pride and joy. Forming a 3.2-kilometre circuit around the historic core, they’re the most complete in Britain, longer and better intact than those of York, another former Roman stronghold on the east side of the Pennine hills buckling through northern England. From Chester’s walls, you’ll spot other peaks – Welsh ones – on the horizon.
Wrexham, and its celebrity-owned soccer club, is just 15 minutes from Chester by rail. On that Welsh city’s leafy outskirts is the UNESCO-listed, 38-metre-high Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Chester’s walls don’t scale those heights, but there are potentially knee-trembling sections, especially when the wind is up. One elevated chunk sweeps by Morgan’s Mount, a military lookout built to defend Royalist Chester from Parliamentarian troops in the 17th-century English Civil War.
Musket ammunition marks still scar Chester’s fortifications, which are great at showcasing the city’s various epochs, landmarks and idyllic flavours. One minute you’ll be overlooking fragments of the Roman amphitheatre or the sturdy, part-Norman cathedral; the next, you’ll see elegant Georgian lanes or Victorian terraced homes, warehouses, canals and railway tracks. You can access and exit the walls at various points, including near the River Dee, which carries sightseeing cruises, rowers and kayakers past the city and its cattle-grazed meadows.
Stairways also flank ancient gateways like the Eastgate, above which is probably Britain’s most photographed clock after London’s Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben). This timepiece was installed after Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and there’s a nice view from the tables on the walls at Huxley’s, a cafe-tearoom serving home-made cakes and scones and locally crafted ales and ice cream.
More refreshments and shopping options will entice you downstairs to The Rows, a complex of two-tiered, timber-beamed arcades, some pre-dating the Tudor period. Bars, boutiques, bistros and brasseries occupy these covered galleries, while alfresco restaurants and traditional pubs pepper the chain-dotted cobbled streets below.
Tucked behind the Victorian gothic town hall, Chester’s sleek new indoor market has Mexican, Bangladeshi, Thai and Mediterranean food vendors trading alongside cocktail mixologists, florists, bakers and fishmongers (Tuesday to Sunday). On the first Saturday of the month, stalls mushroom outside, with local artisans selling their wares.
By train, Chester is day-trippable (under an hour) from Liverpool or Manchester and just over two hours from London. But it’s worth sticking around, perhaps for a flutter at the “Roodee”, Chester’s riverside racecourse, which claims to be the world’s oldest. Founded in 1539, it hosts flat race meetings in the northern spring and summer.
More family oriented is Chester Zoo, where over 30,000 animals, including Sumatran tigers and African lions and elephants, reside on the city’s edges. A little further afield, picturesque villages and stately homes sprinkle the Cheshire countryside, while the wonders of Wales – not least that incredible aqueduct with the tongue-twisting name – may tempt you across the border.
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