Die Geschichte
The building on the rock at Nottingham is not really a castle any more. The medieval fortress was pulled down after the Civil War, and the Duke of Newcastle put a grand mansion in its place, which a crowd burned out in 1831 when the duke stood against reform of Parliament. It sat as a blackened shell for more than 40 years.
Restored, it reopened in 1878 as Nottingham Castle Museum, the first municipal art gallery in Britain outside London. Its most local treasure is medieval: carved panels of Nottingham alabaster, a soft pale stone this city exported across Europe in the Middle Ages for church altarpieces.
And because this is Nottingham, there is Robin Hood, whose legend the museum tells, with a bronze statue of the outlaw drawing his bow below the castle walls.
