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Cardiff is the capital and largest city of Wales, in the south-east of the country, with a population of 381,516 in 2025. Its top sights are Cardiff Castle and Bute Park in the centre, the Principality Stadium, and the Senedd, the Wales Millennium Centre and the Pierhead Building around Cardiff Bay.
A small town until the early 19th century, Cardiff grew as a port for coal when mining began in the region. It was ranked as a city in 1905 and proclaimed capital of Wales in 1955. The Cardiff Bay Barrage of 1999 turned the former tidal bay into a 500-acre freshwater lake surrounded by redeveloped docklands.
Cardiff is the main commercial centre of Wales and the base for the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament. It is a major centre for television and film production, including the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, and it is the most popular destination in Wales, with 21.3 million visitors in 2017.
Cardiff Castle, in the centre of Cardiff, is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic Revival mansion. A Norman motte and bailey was built in the late 11th century over a 3rd-century Roman fort, and from 1868 William Burges remodelled it for the 3rd Marquess of Bute.
Bute Park and Arboretum in Cardiff covers 130 acres of landscaped gardens and parkland that once formed the grounds of Cardiff Castle. Laid out from 1873 by Andrew Pettigrew for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, it runs along the east bank of the River Taff and was given to the city in 1947.
City Hall in Cardiff is the seat of the city's local government in the Cathays Park civic centre, opened on 29 October 1906. Built of Portland stone, it is an important early example of Edwardian Baroque and is Grade I listed, with a 59 m clock tower and a pool with fountains.
The Principality Stadium in Cardiff opened as the Millennium Stadium in June 1999 and is the national stadium of Wales. Home of the Wales national rugby union team, it seats 73,931 under a retractable roof, the largest stadium in Wales, and it hosted the 2017 Champions League Final.
Wales Millennium Centre in the Cardiff Bay area of Cardiff is the national arts centre of Wales, opened in 2004 with a second phase in 2009. It stages opera, ballet, dance and musicals, houses the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, and its main theatre has 1,896 seats.
The Senedd building in Cardiff Bay houses the debating chamber of the Welsh Parliament. Designed by Richard Rogers to be sustainable, it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 1 March 2006, Saint David's Day, cost £69.6 million in total and was nominated for the Stirling Prize.
The Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay is a Grade I listed building built in 1897 as the headquarters of the Bute Dock Company. Designed by William Frame in a French-Gothic Renaissance style, it is faced in glazed terracotta, and its clock tower is nicknamed the Baby Big Ben.
The Norwegian Church Arts Centre in Cardiff Bay began as a Lutheran church consecrated in 1868 for Norwegian sailors. First clad in iron sheets so that it could be moved, it was enlarged several times and reclad in wood in 1894, becoming known as the Little White Church.
Llandaff Cathedral in Llandaff, Cardiff, is the seat of the Bishop of Llandaff, built in the 12th century on an earlier church site. Damaged in 1400 under Owain Glyndwr and by storms, it was restored by John Prichard in the 1840s and 1850s and repaired again after a 1941 parachute mine.
St Fagans National Museum of History in St Fagans, Cardiff, is an open-air museum of Welsh life with more than forty re-erected buildings from across Wales, set in the grounds of the Elizabethan St Fagans Castle. It opened in 1948 and was Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2019.
Castell Coch is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle above Tongwynlais, a village in the north of Cardiff, on the site of a Norman castle. William Burges rebuilt it for the 3rd Marquess of Bute from 1875, its High Victorian interiors were finished in 1891, and it is now cared for by Cadw.
Roath Park in Cardiff is one of the city's most popular parks, with a classic Victorian atmosphere. Built on 130 acres of former bogland given mainly by the 3rd Marquess of Bute in 1887, it has a 30-acre lake for rowing and fishing, botanical gardens and a glasshouse conservatory.
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Log in to add photosPhoto: Tevfik Teker, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
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