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Page 1 of 2 The streets of Chester bustle with shoppers swinging purchases in pretty bags, businesspeople carrying serious briefcases, kids with bulging backpacks and smiling visitors snapping the city's pretty black-and-white buildings, ancient churches and red-cloaked Town Crier.
Founded in the first century AD as a Roman military camp, Chester quickly became one of the busiest cities of Roman Britain. Later generations valued its strategic location on the River Dee - for long the border with Wales. The Normans built a castle for protection. Ships sailed from its port carrying Cheshire cheese and salt to London and passengers to Ireland. The river silted up and the port disappeared, but the tide still rushes in and out, and the city still thrives. Rich in relics of its past and blessed with modern facilities - including the zoo that is the UK's premier wildlife attraction - Chester has everything to make it perfect for a weekend break.
Not least of Chester's charms is that it is wonderfully walkable. The place to start is the huge red and gold clock that straddles the bridge over the main shopping street, Eastgate Street. Climb the steps by the bridge and you will find yourself on the city walls with a birds' eye view of both the clock above and the shoppers below.
 Rows at the Cross. Credit: Chester City Council
Famed for its intricately carved choir stalls, the Cathedral has lots to lure the visitor, not least a tiny Madonna and Child painted on cobweb. The medieval cloisters and chapter house are still intact, making it easy to imagine long-gone Benedictine monks meditating or copying manuscripts. If you have coffee or lunch in the refectory, you can even visualise one monk ascending the stone pulpit to read to his brethren as they silently consumed their meal.
Royalist timesPassing the cathedral, you come to King Charles Tower perched above the Shropshire Union Canal. From its height Charles I watched his armies defeated at the Battle of Rowton Heath in 1645. Inside is a small Civil War museum that explains that the war had serious consequences for Chester's walls. They protected Royalist Chester for a while, but the Puritans eventually breached them so the city could not hold out in future battles. Nonetheless, one of the oldest sections of the wall is nearby. Recent excavations have revealed that part of the Roman fortress lies close to the bridge that crosses Northgate Street. Browsers beware, here! A couple of second-hand bookshops will tempt you, as may the steps leading to a welcoming café.
Cross the Northgate Bridge and go straight until you spot the elaborate canal locks down on your right. Nearby stands the Water Tower, so-called because the River Dee, now about a quarter of a mile away, once washed its base. While you pause, a train might whiz by on its way to North Wales, and the convergence of the old riverside tower with the canal and railway helps explain Chester's prosperity: it has always been a major junction on routes to both Ireland and Wales.
As you proceed, heading towards Watergate Bridge, the road runs alongside you on the left, though looking right you'll see that you are still on ancient ramparts. Passing over the bridge, peek up Watergate Street, the most ancient-looking of Chester's main streets and home to numerous antique dealers. Soon you reach the Roodee, site of the Roman port and now Chester Racecourse. Race meetings take place throughout the summer, and the walls give you a perfect view - and it's absolutely free! The most important race is the Chester Cup in early May. Dating from 1539, this is the UK's oldest horse race, and race fans believe that horses that succeed on the notoriously tight course will do well in the Epsom Derby a few weeks later.
The River Dee skirts the racecourse and you will see the elegant Grosvenor Bridge crossing it. Built in 1832, it was then the longest single-span bridge in the world, and it helped change the ancient city by bringing in the first road that did not conform to the Roman plan. After crossing this road, the Walls pass Chester Castle, the base of the many battalions that have defended Chester. Little of this is evident from the exterior, which was rebuilt in the 18th century, but inside you can learn more about its history at the Cheshire Military Museum. About 100 yards away lies the Grosvenor Museum, which houses a collection of Roman artifacts and a display of homes throughout the centuries. Remembered in songBeyond the castle the walls run near the river until they cross the fourth street, aptly named Bridge Street because it leads to the 14th-century Old Dee Bridge and the Norman weir. Built around 1092, the weir provided power for the mills immortalised in the old song "The Miller of the Dee". (He's the one who "Worked and sang from morn to night, no lark was blithe as he".) The mills are gone, but birds have taken their place: herons, cormorants, ducks, seagulls, moorhens and swans, all posing nonchalantly for visitors' cameras.
The riverbank beyond the weir is called the Groves. Swans and ducks cruise about here, looking for children who feed them bread. With ice-cream kiosks, boats and a band playing in the pretty pink bandstand on Sunday afternoons, this is a pleasant place to dawdle. If you walk to the end of the footbridge and turn up the steps, you'll come to Grosvenor Park, which has a ruined abbey, shady holly walks, flowerbeds and a charming train which once carried guests' luggage at the nearby estate of the Duke of Westminster, but now speeds children through the park.
The walls have now brought you almost full circle. Passing a lavender-filled garden that shelters a collection of Roman remains, you have just a short walk to the Newgate Bridge over Pepper Street - a name that recalls its history as a grocery centre. To the right you will see the Roman amphitheatre, currently the site of the UK's largest archeological dig. Already, the work has revealed an early timber amphitheatre from 100 AD, and a larger amphitheatre with seating extending 30 feet high, a design that mimics the amphitheatres of Pompeii and Rome, but not found elsewhere in the UK.
Press on a few more yards and you will be back under the clock - this time with a list of places you want to explore further.
If archeology fascinates you, you'll hot-foot back to the amphitheatre and watch the archaeologists at work. As they discover new artifacts, which include medieval pottery, pipes and metalwork as well as Roman coins and brooches, they are then displayed at the Chester Visitors Centre, the brick building just over the road.
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