U.S. Senator JD Vance described Caernarfon Castle in North Wales as "the coolest thing I've ever seen" in his new book, "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith." Vance, who visited the 13th-century UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013 with his wife, Usha Vance, recounted the experience in an excerpt published by The Sunday Times.
He noted the castle's historical significance, including its role as the site for King Charles' investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969. Vance contrasted the castle's age with buildings in the United States, where structures built around 150 years ago are often considered historic. "This castle, by contrast, was already hundreds of years old when English settlers first landed in the United States," he wrote. Vance reflected on the castle's enduring presence, observing that "for nearly a millennium, young men had climbed the castle walls and watched the sun reflected on the surrounding water."
The visit, described by Vance as a "cool tourist stop," reportedly offered him a new perspective on life and marriage. Prior to experiencing the scale of Caernarfon Castle, Vance stated he had never felt a sense of being small within an "infinite" universe. He wrote, "But here, on the banks of a river I'd never heard of, in a castle we selected as a cool tourist stop, I felt for the first time something similar: the scale of time, and how little of the life of the world we'd ever see."