Camelot, << KAM uh lot, >> was the most famous castle in the medieval legends about King Arthur of Britain. Camelot was Arthur’s favorite dwelling and the starting point of the Quest for the Holy Grail (see Holy Grail). Camelot also came to symbolize the glories of Arthurian civilization.
By the 1200’s, Camelot served as the symbolic center of the Arthurian world, but its location is not clear. In his Le Morte Darthur (about 1470), Sir Thomas Malory placed the castle in Winchester. Some writers favored Caerleon Castle in Wales as described in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (about 1136). Modern attempts have been made to identify Camelot with ruins of Cadbury Castle in Somerset that were excavated in 1966. However, Camelot is perhaps best viewed not as a particular place but as a state of mind or a reflection of a lost ideal.
