Books about Cardiff, Wales
Some interesting books (#Aff) about Cardiff are featured below.
About the city of Cardiff, Wales
Cardiff, capital city of Wales, is home to many Welsh cultural institutions as well as the National Assembly for Wales (empowered to make legislation for Wales in the devolved areas of government since 2011).
Cardiff became a city in 1905, then also capital of Wales in 1955. In recent years the Cardiff Bay waterfront area has benefitted from considerable investment and redevelopment.
History
Archaeological sites including several burial chambers indicate habitation in the area of present day Cardiff dating from an estimated 6,000 years ago. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity all feature in the early history of the Cardiff Bay area. More detailed information can be traced from the C11th when, in 1081, work began to build a castle within the walls of the former Roman fort. Cardiff received a series of royal charters in C14th and was made the county town of the new shire of Glamorgan on its creation in the late 1530s.
After varied fortunes in the C17th, by the late C18th Cardiff Castle (below) was being renovated and other improvements to the town included new facilities such as a bank, printing press, racecourse and improved communications with Bristol and London, by sea and stagecoach respectively.
The C19th was a period of rapid expansion and industrial success. It was only in the C20th that Cardiff became first a city, then the capital of Wales, although it also suffered from industrial decline in the 1930s, damage in WW2 and the closure of the steelworks in the late 1970s.
Today Cardiff is an exciting modern city with many landmarks, cultural attractions and sporting and leisure opportunities as well as shopping, entertainment and other services.
Sports
Cardiff is one of the UK's foremost sporting locations with facilities for, and enthusiasts of, a huge variety of sports including the most common (across the UK) of football, rugby and cricket and well as other less widely known but no less passionately engaged in sports such as judo, fencing, sailing, skiing, korfball and bowls, among others.
Sports venues in and around Cardiff include Ely racecourse, several golf courses, two yacht clubs, cycle tracks and the Millennium Stadium, which was used for many major fixtures normally held at Wembley Stadium while that was being rebuilt in 2001-6.
See also news from, about or mentioning Cardiff, Wales.
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