YOU can see it from miles around and, along with the Market Square, it is an icon that sums up the city.
It transcends politics, and can justifiably claim to be a symbol of struggles for freedom. More than any council chamber, it should be for the people .
It isn't for the people at the Heritage Lottery Fund, though. Not yet, anyway.
The panel of the great and the good who sit and deliberate over applications for lottery funding have decided that a bid for more than £15 million to help drag Nottingham Castle into tourism's 21st century isn't an immediate priority.
Which is a pity, considering the shabby state the Castle is, and has been, in for years.
It's a question probably destined to remain unanswered, but you do wonder why what ought to be an historic tourism magnet and a proud symbol of ancient freedoms fought and won has been neglected for so long.
You wonder, too, whether it might have fared better under different stewardship.
Along with the likes of Wollaton Hall and Newstead Abbey, it is owned by Nottingham City Council.
The logic of the joint ownership of these cultural jewels is that they can be looked after by a public body and promoted under one marketing strategy.
Easier said than done, of course, when that public body is under pressure to tackle festering sores like deprivation and educational under-achievement.
Spending a few million on re-gilting an ancient ceiling or re-plastering intricate cornices doesn't really do much for poor school results.
And to be blunt, there are few votes to be had showering financial blessings on Newstead Abbey, which isn't even in Nottingham.
Would it not have been better if these historic monuments had been passed on to the likes of English Heritage or the National Trust?
These options have been explored in the past, but the scale of the work needed to bring some of them up to scratch means it would probably have been a sale where we paid them, rather than the other way round.
Which leaves the Castle Working Party beating a path to the door of the Heritage Lottery Fund. So, one set of the great and the good trying to convince another.
The HLF's great and good probably take some convincing. They include several ex-BBC executives, people with service on the Arts Council, English Heritage, the National Trust, several consultants, a former investment banker, even a professor of conflict and culture (who ought to be interested in the Castle).
While you wouldn't necessarily expect the HLF's trustees to cover every corner of this sceptred isle, the usual regional suspects are in there: London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, Yorkshire, West Midlands.
Still, this shouldn't stand in the way of a good bid – the HLF has an East Midlands regional committee (which, ironically, has its offices on Castle Gate).
And the Castle Working Party is led by people who know the way this particular world works.
We don't know for sure why the bid was rejected by the HLF this time round, though there were mutterings of too many bids, not enough money to go round, do call again.
But for an application to stand any chance it has to be given a high priority by the regional committee – without that, those great and good trustees are unlikely to give it a second glance.
It will be November before the Castle Working Party can submit another bid, and on the positive side, the HLF has at least asked them to do so. We'll get a useful indication of which way the decision might go when the HLF publishes the detailed minutes of the meeting at which it decided to reject the bid, as it usually indicates how much priority it will give an application in the future.
Whatever happens, it will be this time next year before we find out whether the Castle has got the funding it so desperately needs.
Another year may be small beer for a landmark which has stood sentinel for centuries. But it has taken too long to sort the Castle out, far too long.
Having to pay to get in to a symbol of popular freedoms seems both ironic and ambitious (though I'd happily make voluntary donations), and the story it currently tells is a pale shadow of the rich and significant history it has been witness to.
Which is why rejection is not something the proposed City of Rebels should be comfortable with. When the Castle Working Party submits its bid again in November, I'd suggest it encloses a taut bow and sharpened arrow. With, of course, the very best regards from Nottingham…
