Top Ten Things To Do In Cardiff

Whether it’s your first time visiting Cardiff, your fourth or your fortieth, there is always going to be something to traverse or come back to in this historical capital of Wales. Being filled with museums, parks and entertainment venues to enjoy, you may have a difficult time narrowing down your options of which places you want to explore!

 

1. Visit Cardiff Castle

The Cardiff Castle is one of the most romantic and best-preserved heritage attractions in Wales. Located at the heart of the city, surrounded by beautiful parks, the Cardiff Castle has about 2000 years of cultural significance and history waiting to be explored. 

This structure was first built by the Romans in the 1st century AD, as they started to develop a series of forts as a defence strategy. By the 11th century, Normans constructed the Keep that continues to dominate the Castle greens. The Lords of Glamorgan during the 15th-century medieval times began working on the House. The Bute family also settled inside the Cardiff Castle in the 19th century, transforming the house into the opulent Victorian-Gothic home it is known to be.

 

2. Explore the Cardiff National Museum

Located right near Cathays Park, The National Museum homes a vast collection of contemporary art pieces, artefacts representing natural history, and galleries that show the evolution of Wales.  Founded in 1905, this museum used to share the building with the Cardiff Library and was a sub-department until 1893. This museum is also known as the “Welsh Museum of Natural History, Archaeology and Art” which holds collections of botany, fine and applied art, geology and zoology.

 

3. See the Millenium Centre

One of the most iconic structures to rise in the 21st century, this landmark showcases the contemporary creative side of Cardiff, with curated collections in galleries and regular shows for tourists and locals alike. Located in the Bay area of Cardiff, this centre hosts performances ranging from opera, ballet, contemporary dance, comedies and musicals. This Centre homes eight art organizations such as the National Orchestra and Opera, dance, theatre and literature companies who make use of the large theatre and two smaller halls. The Main Theatre named after Donald Gordon can accommodate about 2,500 people, and the two smaller Halls, BBC Hoddinott Hall and the Weston Studio Theatre can seat 350 and 250 people respectively. There will always be something to watch at the Millenium Centre, so whether you want to enjoy the show or just have access to the interior of a Zaha Hadid masterpiece, this Centre is worth visiting!

 

4. Find Castell Coch

Being only a few hundred years old, this was built in the Victorian Era and gives visitors a very fairytale scene because of the middle-age castle aesthetic. This was also completed by the Bute family, but is located at the very edge of the city limits but can be seen when arriving in Cardiff via car.

 

5. Explore the Taff Trails

The Taff Trail leads straight into the Brecon Beacons National Park, after starting from the Ronald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay. This 50-mile (80 km) trail is usually completed in a span of 5 to 7 days, to be able to fully enjoy the views and vistas that the trail has to offer.

 

6. St. Fagan’s

Perched on the fringes of Cardiff, this museum houses some of the most important structures in Wales. There are about 40 different buildings that resemble an Iron Age Village, complete with a row of ironworker’s houses and traditional arts and crafts activities all found in 60 acres of greens. 

 

7. Cardiff’s Centenary Walk

A great way to explore the city, as well as spot some of the unusual bits of Cardiff. This route tours you to some historic landmarks and shows you secrets that only the locals know such as Dock Feeder and the Animal Wall. This is an easy 2.3 mile (3.6 km) walk that can easily be seen by following numbered markers on the pavement.

 

8. See the Senedd

Located by Cardiff Bay, the Senedd is the powerhouse of Wales and the seat of the Welsh Assembly. Tours can be arranged and are free of charge.

 

9. Enjoy the Cardiff Bay

The 2,700 acre Cardiff Bay waterfront is well worth the expenditure, energy, and time. This bay used to be the only means of exporting coal to the rest of the world, playing a key role in the Industrial Age. As the coal mining industry grew and business in the area boomed, so did the population. From dock owners and sailors, communities started increasing, and so did the mix of cultures and nationalities in Cardiff, building the locale’s character. 

The Cardiff Bay development has not only drawn tourists to the bay-side sights but also the water-based scenes such as the Wetland Reserve, where rare birds and a viewing platform can be found, as well as the Cardiff Waterbus, which offers a public transportation service for cruises.

 

10. Explore The City of Arcades

Make sure to spend time in Cardiff’s well-preserved and robust shopping arcades. Dissecting the centre of the city, these covered public spaces were built to provide residents and visitors with a good time shopping indoors without worrying about the weather and shopping along dangerous roads and sidewalks. 

The Royal Arcade, built-in 1858 is the oldest of more than 2,600 feet of arcades in Cardiff. Original shopfronts still exist and are running, so you better catch them while they’re still there! Here, you will be faced with limitless choices of Welsh traditional crafts and wooden goods. More arcades include the High Street Arcade, built-in 1889 where you can shop for clothing or fabrics, another is the Castle Arcade which opened a year after the High Street and showcases art galleries, antique boutiques, and food shops. Another arcade is the Cardiff Market that was built in 1890 to provide local growers with a space to sell their fresh produce. Cardiff has arcades that are home to independent shops, cafes, bars, and food stalls in the heart of the city that anyone cannot resist. 

 

Top Ten Fun Facts About Cardiff

More than the city’s archaeological and architectural scenes, there’s a lot more to Cardiff than the castles and arcades. Here are some facts about the capital of wales that make it a unique city.

 

1. Bizarre Occupations

In the books of the Cardiff Corporation, a city mole-catcher was employed to catch moles. Due to the growing number of pubs in Cardiff, an employee was hired for the sole reason to taste beer back during the 19th century.

 

2. Roland Dahl’s Origins

Not only is Ronald Dahl one of the world’s most famous writers, but also one of the most famous sons of Cardiff. Born in Llandaff, Cardiff, his family migrated here in pursuit of a business in coal, like many other families. 

In his autobiography, he describes Mrs Pratchett’s Sweet Shop to be the “very centre of our lives” and comparing it to a bar for a drunk and a church to a bishop. He confessed that he played a prank on the shopkeeper and slipped a stinky dead mouse inside a jar of gobstoppers to scare Mrs Pratchett. This antic worked, but Mrs Pratchett immediately informed his school headmaster of these hijinks, causing him and his friends to be punished accordingly. Talk about having the last laugh!

 

3. Westgate Street Used To Be a River

The River Taff used to roughly follow the route of Westgate Street, and Quay Street used to lead from High Street up until the city centre. Historians believe that there may have been a quay on this site since the time of the Romans, only being repaired and expanded through the years. It was only until 1849 that Isambard Kingdom Brunel suggested that the course of the River Taff be realigned to reduce the risk of flooding and erosion in the city. Excavation soon began and the man-made channel a few hundred yards to the west of the original river was completed in 1853, which created 18 acres of meadowland for the city. 

Now, Westgate Street is known for its pubs that date all the way back to the 1880s and have clever names to remind them of the Quay's past such as The Cattle Market, The City Arms, and Dover Arms.

 

4. First Fair Trade Capital in the World

Cardiff was the first Fair Trade capital in the World, showing everyone that green and ethical living is possible and is beneficial for all! 

The concept of Fair Trade came from the 1950s when Europeans and Americans were starting to travel to different countries and observed that local artisans and farmers were struggling with their businesses. Most Western travellers would simply buy their products and sell them for a higher price back home, which later on was coined as exploitation. Fair Trade then comes in during the 1990s when the Fair Trade USA founder Paul Rice was working with coffee farmers in Nicaragua and wanted to create standards that would monitor how Fair Trade was across the globe. This work served as the foundation of the Fair Trade Certification which is used by big companies who sell commodity goods.

 

5. Welsh, an Endangered Language

Studies show that only 9% of the Cardiff population still speak Welsh fluently. Efforts are being made to preserve this language which has been considered by the United Nations to be endangered. 

Researchers mostly blame the internet for the decline of this language, even after it has been a compulsory subject in schools. The youth of Cardiff may be embarrassed or scared when they talk to someone who can speak Welsh, probably because they have been so used to the English language of the internet that they have started mixing up syllables and pronunciation. It has become natural to revert to English in cases where you are searching for a coffee shop nearby or a serving of fish and chips. 

 

6. One of the Busiest Streets is Built on a Burial Site

The busiest streets of Cardiff are Albany, City, Richmond, and Crwys. This was known as the Death Junction, and these fields were named Gallows Pit, Defiled Pool, Cut Throats, and Putrid Field where bodies were dumped. In recent years, the Richmond Road runs through the centre of where these fields used to be.

 

7. There’s a Chair Hanging Over the River Taff

The chair was known as a stool and was a permanent structure that was fixed at the end of a long piece of timber and suspended over the river. This was used as a punishment for women who were “a scold, common barrator or scandal-monger or a common eavesdropper and hearkener after the news,” which simply means that if you were into gossip and spreading fake news, you were made to sit on this chair.

 

8. Someone Drowned in a Toilet

Public housing projects in the 1800s did not have toilets, not even communal bathrooms. Sanitation was a big problem during these times, especially when 54 people would be sharing four rooms. This setting made it easy for cholera to thrive and breed, ultimately taking the lives of 1,849,396 people of Cardiff died. Imagine children who had not reached their first birthday dying because of “a huge bag of sewage water.” This was all due to the fact that a slaughterhouse was dumping their animal offal in the streets, then ending up on the river beds. In 1750, a woman called Christian Lewis drowned by falling into the toilet of King David Inn.

 

9. A Country with a Fictitious Creature as an Emblem

There are only two countries in the whole world that have fictitious creatures as part of their heritage and culture. Scotland has the Scottish unicorn, while the Welsh has the Welsh dragon, which is so important to its people that the flag of Wales consists of the red dragon on a green and white field. 

The Welsh dragon is a heraldic symbol and a battle standard of King Arthur, among other Celtic leaders. During the reign of the Tudor Monarchs, the red dragon was used to show support to the English Crown’s coat of arms.

 

10. Cardiff Has Its Own Island

Five miles off the coast of Cardiff is the little island Flat Holm. Here, you can go on a day trip and explore the old buildings, sea bird colonies, ruins of a cholera hospital, and wartime barracks. This is also where the first radio signal was transmitted a morse code message to nearby Lavernock Point saying “Are you ready?” on May 13, 1897.