As soon as we set foot in Chester we are taken back to the Middle Ages; time seems to have slipped backwards. Is it a dream? Or are these decorated timber-framed houses, like big doll’s houses, actually for ordinary habitation. We look around and see a fairytale city with its castle looking down from a high perch, its beautiful cathedral glowing rosily in sandstone, the most complete medieval monastic complex still standing in this fair country. Then in the same ancient stone the Old Dee Bridge, and what of The Rows that convert the pathways into shadowed corridors, once protecting the Doulton-like ladies’ voluminous dresses from the dirt below? The quaint inns have a history drifting back through the centuries. Chester is unique, a city of contrasts and antiquity that have been preserved and improved upon by the likes of architects Penson, Douglas, Lockwood, James Harrison and his namesake Thomas Harrison who took the already beautiful city and, unlike more modern developments, improved upon it. So let us take a tour around the walls and the city inside them to get a taste of what Chester has to offer for those who appreciate beauty, antiquity and history.