3D print Cardiff Castle
A free, printable model of the shell keep of Cardiff Castle on its green mound, with the castle walls and water around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About Cardiff Castle
Cardiff Castle, in the center of Cardiff, Wales, joins a medieval fortress to a Gothic revival mansion of the Victorian era. In the late 11th century, Norman invaders raised the original motte and bailey castle over a Roman fort from the 3rd century. Either William the Conqueror or Robert Fitzhamon ordered it built. A wooden keep topped an earth motte 12 m (40 ft) high, the largest built in Wales. Around the middle of the 12th century, a polygonal shell keep, 23 m (77 ft) wide and 9 m (30 ft) high, was built on top of the motte.
In 1423 the 13th Earl of Warwick took ownership and founded the main lodgings on the castle's west side, where a tall octagonal tower dominates. A Parliamentary force took the castle early in the English Civil War, and Royalist supporters regained it in 1645. In the mid-18th century it passed to the Scottish Marquesses of Bute, and the 1st Marquess hired Capability Brown and Henry Holland to landscape the grounds and to convert the main lodgings into a Georgian mansion.
The 3rd Marquess of Bute transformed the castle, paying for a large program of renovations by William Burges, who remodeled it in a Gothic revival style. After Roman remains came to light, Roman-style walls and a gatehouse were added. During the Second World War, the castle walls were fitted with air raid shelters, with room for as many as 1,800 people. Following the death of the 4th Marquess in 1947, the City of Cardiff received the castle as a gift.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 5 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 6 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 8 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- Battlements and a flagpole
- Small battlements ring the keep wall, and a thin flagpole rises from the tower. Print friendly adapts these to the print scale; Full detail keeps them on a larger print.
- A ring wall with inner steps
- The keep is a ring of wall around an open courtyard, with a narrow stair inside. Layers of 0.12–0.16 mm keep the wall edges and steps crisp, and a bigger print helps.
- One piece with the ground
- Cardiff Castle is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. Cardiff Castle takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
Cardiff Castle is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a Cardiff Castle STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. Cardiff Castle grows with the print: about 5 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
