A 39-room sandstone pile built in the late 1880s for Robert Dunsmuir, the Scottish coal baron who was at one point the richest man in British Columbia. Dunsmuir died months before it was finished and never lived in it. The interior has been restored to its Victorian state — stained glass, tiled fireplaces, ornate woodwork — and the tower at the top gives a view back over the city to the Olympic Mountains. Ten minutes from downtown.
Craigdarroch Castle
Victorian coal baron's mansion with stained glass and city views
| Address | 1050 Joan Crescent, Victoria, BC |
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A story
Robert Dunsmuir built Craigdarroch to fulfil a promise he'd made to his wife Joan: if she agreed to leave Scotland for the Vancouver Island coalfields in 1851, he would one day build her a castle. It took him thirty years to accumulate the fortune to do it. He died in 1889, months before it was completed. Joan moved in anyway and lived there until 1908.