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The Pierhead in Cardiff, Glamorgan

Cardiff Cardiff is a major city in the southeast of Glamorgan, of which it is the county town. Cardiff is the largest city in Wales and was declared the Capital of Wales in 1955. The city is the chief commercial centre of south Wales and the base for most cultural and sporting institutions concerned with Wales. According to recent estimates, the population of the city is 324,800, while the wider metropolitan area has a population of nearly 1.1 million, more than a third of the total Welsh population. Cardiff is a significant tourism centre and a popular visitor destination, drawing 14.6 million visitors in 2009. A small town until the early 19th century, Cardiff rose to prominence as a major port in the later eighteenth century for the transport of copper and later coal. The port facilities and associated new suburbs were developed by the Earl of Bute, from whom Butetown is named. As the industrial revolution took hold and the mines of the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire valleys sent their coal to the port, Cardiff grew into a major city. Cardiff was made a city in 1905. Since the 1990s Cardiff has seen significant development with a new waterfront area at Cardiff Bay which contains the Senedd building, home to the Welsh Assembly and the Wales Millennium Centre arts complex. (Read more)