Chester Audioguides

Around 75 AD, the Roman Twentieth Legion established a fortress called Deva Victrix on a sandstone bluff above the River Dee. They built an amphitheatre large enough to seat 10,000 people - the largest known in Britain - and a grid of streets that still determines where you walk in Chester today. The walls they raised in stone are still standing, nearly two miles of them, more complete than anywhere else in Britain. You can walk the full circuit on top.

Medieval Chester built itself on top of Rome without entirely hiding it.

The Rows, the city's most unusual feature, are two-level covered arcades running above the ground-floor shops on Watergate Street, Eastgate Street, Bridge Street, and Northgate Street. The upper walkways date to the 13th and 14th centuries, possibly built over Roman rubble. They contain what may be the oldest surviving shopfront in England. Victorian Chester added a layer of elaborate black-and-white timber-framing to existing buildings, which gives the city a theatrically medieval appearance that is partly historical and partly a 19th-century confection.