Cardiff: the castle at the heart of the Welsh capital

The Cardiff Castle, built on Roman and Norman foundations, houses Victorian interiors redecorated in fantastical Gothic style by an eccentric marquess in the 1800s.

A short walk away, the Cardiff Arcades, Victorian and Edwardian covered shopping galleries, host independent shops in a labyrinth of nineteenth-century passages with original glass skylights.

Heading toward the bay, you reach Cardiff Bay, a former industrial port area converted into a modern quarter of offices, restaurants and home to the Welsh Parliament.

Toward evening, the Millennium Stadium, with its retractable roof, dominates the city skyline a short walk from the Taff River, illuminated on match evenings.

The Third Marquess of Bute, among the world's wealthiest men in the nineteenth century thanks to Welsh coal trading, invested part of his fortune to transform Cardiff Castle into a richly decorated Gothic fantasy.

Cardiff Bay was once the world's busiest coal export port, before the decline of the Welsh mining industry in the twentieth century.