Where was Camelot?

Camelot is an imaginary place and thus it is perhaps pointless to speak of its location. In literary sources, it is usually situated in the south of England. Some have speculated that if Arthur actually existed he would have needed a base of operations. John Leland identified Camelot with Cadbury Castle, a hill fort in Somerset. Excavations carried out at the site in 1966-1970 confirmed that this large hill fort (with 1200 yards of perimeter surrounding an eighteen-acre enclosure and rising about 250 feet above the surrounding countryside) was refortified in the Arthurian Era and was occupied by a powerful leader and his followers. In many medieval texts Arthur holds court at Caerleon or some other city. Camelot is first mentioned in the twelfth century in Chrétien de Troves's Lancelot. In the thirteenth century Vulgate Cycle. Camelot is said to have been converted by the son of Joseph of Arimathea, Josephus, who had built here the Church of St Stephen, in which some texts say Arthur and Guinevere were married. Camelot becomes the principal city of Arthur's realm and remains so in many, though not all, later texts. In his Le Morte 2! Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory identifies Camelot as Winchester.