King Arthur: From Merlin's Dragons to Avalon

Before Arthur is born, Geoffrey of Monmouth has King Vortigern try to build a tower, but whatever his builders raise by day the earth swallows by night. His magicians demand a youth who never had a father; the boy they find is Merlin, who has a pond drained to reveal two dragons asleep in hollow stones. The white dragon stands for the Saxons, the red for the British. Welsh tradition ties the tale to this rocky hillock above Llyn Dinas, where the ramparts and the base of a tower remain.

Location precision: Tradition attaches the dragons to this hillfort, but the platform above its pool, excavated in the 1950s, dates far later than Vortigern.

Gorlois puts his wife Igerna in Tintagel, on the sea-shore, a place of great safety with a single rock entrance that three men could hold against a kingdom. Merlin's medicines turn Uther into Gorlois, Ulfin into Jordan and himself into Bricel; the porter lets them in, and that night Arthur is conceived. Geoffrey never says Arthur was born here. The ruins you see were begun by Earl Richard of Cornwall in 1233 to echo the legend, while digs in 2016 and 2017 found the outline of a palace from the 5th or early 6th century.

Location precision: Geoffrey names Tintagel, but an archaeologist wrote in 1935 that no evidence supports the Arthur link, and the pin marks today's castle on the headland.

Visitor guidance: English Heritage manages the site; a footbridge to the island opened in 2019.

With Uther dead, the nobles gather at Silchester and ask Archbishop Dubricius to crown Arthur. The need is urgent: the Saxons under Colgrin are trying to wipe out the British. Dubricius and the other bishops set the crown on Arthur's head, and he is fifteen. In Geoffrey's telling the place is the walled Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum. The earthworks and much of the ruined wall are still visible, and the amphitheatre outside the walls can be clearly seen.

Location precision: Geoffrey names Silchester but no building; the pin marks the Roman town's ruins.

Visitor guidance: Open to the public every day in daylight hours, without charge.

A Saxon army marches on Bath and lays siege to it. Arthur arrives in a golden helmet engraved with a dragon, carrying the shield Priwen, painted with the Virgin Mary, and he draws Caliburn, a sword made in the isle of Avallon. Geoffrey says he killed 470 Saxons with his own hand. The older Historia Brittonum lists a twelfth battle at Mount Badon, where 960 men fell to one charge by Arthur. Geoffrey equates Badon with Bath, so Bathampton Down is one candidate; Liddington Castle in Wiltshire is another.

Location precision: Nothing certain is known about the date or place of Badon; the pin marks one hill near Bath that Geoffrey's account suggests.

Arthur resolves to hold a magnificent court at Pentecost, wearing the crown, and summons kings, princes and archbishops to the City of Legions on the river Usk. Geoffrey's city rivals Rome with its gilded palace roofs. Welsh poetry and Geoffrey make Caerleon Arthur's capital, and Gerald of Wales wrote that Roman ambassadors were received at his court here. The Roman fortress is real: the amphitheatre, baths and barracks are excavated, and the amphitheatre has long been linked to the Round Table, though it shows no sixth-century occupation.

Location precision: Geoffrey names the city, not a building; the pin marks the Roman fortress area where the amphitheatre lies.

Visitor guidance: The excavated Roman amphitheatre, baths and barracks can be seen in the town.

Camelot is not in Geoffrey. Absent from the early Arthurian material, it first appears in 12th-century French romances, and Malory firmly places it at Winchester. The claim for this Somerset hill is local tradition, first written down by John Leland in 1542. What the hill holds is an 18-acre plateau ringed by ramparts, occupied again from about 470 until some time after 580, with traces of a Great Hall. Geoffrey Ashe argued it was the base of a historical Arthur, but students of the period have not widely accepted that.

Location precision: Camelot has no fixed place in the sources; Winchester in Malory and this hillfort in local tradition are rival identifications.

In Geoffrey's version Arthur chases the traitor Modred into Cornwall as far as the river Cambula. Modred falls in the fighting, and Arthur is mortally wounded and carried to Avallon. The chronicle tradition puts Camlann on the Camel in Cornwall, with Layamon naming Camelford, while the romances, Malory's included, set the last battle at Salisbury. At Slaughterbridge a sixth-century stone by the river is linked by folk tradition to Arthur meeting Mordred, but the name comes from Old English for marsh and there is no evidence of a battle here.

Location precision: Nobody knows where Camlann was fought; the pin marks the hamlet on the river Camel where Cornish tradition puts it.

Dying, Arthur tells Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the water. Bedivere hides it under a tree instead, and Arthur calls him a traitor for betraying him twice. The third time a hand rises from the water, catches the sword, brandishes it and vanishes. Malory has Arthur first take the sword from an arm in white samite in the midst of a lake. Cornish tradition claims Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor as the Lady of the Lake's home. In 1899 it dried up completely, disproving the belief that it was bottomless.

Location precision: Malory describes a lake and a water side without a name; the Dozmary link is a Cornish tradition.

Visitor guidance: A small lake on Bodmin Moor, about 2 km south of Bolventor.

In Malory Arthur says he will go to the vale of Avilion to heal his grievous wound, and Bedivere ends his days with a hermit in a chapel beside Glastonbury. In 1191 the abbey announced the discovery of the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere, with a lead cross naming Arthur on the Isle of Avalon. Historians today see a publicity stunt to raise funds after the fire of 1184, yet in 1278 Edward I and Queen Eleanor attended a reburial of Arthur's remains at the High Altar. Some medieval accounts identify Avalon with Glastonbury Tor.

Location precision: Avalon is a legendary island; the abbey's tomb of 1191 is widely thought a fundraising stunt, and the pin marks the abbey.

Visitor guidance: The abbey ruins are open as a visitor attraction.