As you are probably aware, the bones of Richard III were found a few years ago buried in a car park in central Leicester. After being sampled, CT scanned, carbon dated, DNA tested, and 3D modeled to establish that it was in fact the missing monarch, the bones were buried again a few yards away in Leicester Cathedral, which along with the nearby Richard III Visitor Centre and Richard III statue and Richard III’s Medieval Leicester signage makes a Richard III theme park. It’s actually pretty good, apart from the Cathedral.

The weather had been good. You can hang your laundry up to dry outside. There is no need to do it in the nave of a medieval cathedral.

When you fight your way past the laundry and the guided tour (the guide had an incredibly annoying voice) you get to see the new burial place of Richard III.

I’m not sure about the deeply incised cross in the slab, unless it symbolizes his skull being hacked apart at the Battle of Bosworth. He wasn’t exactly a model of Christian virtues. His brother Edward IV became king by defeating and killing Henry VI, and then died suddenly. Edward’s son, also called Edward, became King Edward V for a few months, but Richard had him confined to the Tower of London, and then declared a bastard so that Richard could become king. Edward V and his brother then vanished under mysterious circumstances, and many people believe that Richard had them killed.

The statue of Richard III is pretty camp.

His fans leave white roses there.

In fact, Richard’s personal symbol was a white boar, so they should really be leaving bacon. I’m tempted to piss them all off by leaving a model horse there.

He didn’t really look like that. He was something like this.

That’s copy of a portrait of Richard III along with a model of his head based on reconstruction from the skull. The portrait was painted after his death, so it was possibly deliberately unflattering to suck up to the incumbent Tudor dynasty who had deposed and killed him.

That’s from the Richard III Visitor Centre, where they do a pretty good job of explaining the ridiculous complexities of the Wars of the Roses downstairs, and the ridiculous success of the archeological dig upstairs.

By now you’re probably familiar with the Andrew Museum Rating System. While this museum does not have any real skulls, they do have a 3D printed replica of the entire skeleton based on the CT scan, so I’ll give them a passing score on that.

The big hole in the front of the skull was not a battlefield injury, that was the result of an overenthusiastic archeologist with a pick axe. To be fair, the council did not want to part with their car park for very long so the whole dig was only supposed to take nine days. All the experts thought there was not much chance of finding anything really interesting, let alone the very person they were looking for, let alone finding him on the very first day of the dig.

When they found the right bones, though that changed everything. There is still a big hole in the car park.

From time to time they project the outline of the bones onto the hole where they were found.

OK, let’s go back to the cathedral. The laundry is probably dry now, so you won’t get dripped on. Here’s a few nice details from inside and outside to finish off with.