The Arab Room at Cardiff Castle is a tribute to Islamic pattern by the Victorian architect William Burges. Ancient Islamic architects loved pattern and developed complicated geometry and symmetry. They repeated, rotated and reflected shapes so that no shape dominated and the pattern seemed to go on forever like the heavens. The greatest examples are the palaces of the Alhambra in Spain built in the 14th and 15th centuries. William Burges built the Arab Room at Cardiff Castle around 1880.