Culture, Media, Sport and Tourism

The city has a professional football team, Cardiff City F.C., nicknamed “The Bluebirds”. There is also the world-famous Cardiff RFC or Cardiff Blues rugby union team, and the Cardiff Devils Ice Hockey team. The city also features an international sporting venue, the Millennium Stadium. Cardiff hosted the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.

Cardiff is home to Cardiff Castle, the National Assembly for Wales, St. David’s Hall, the National Museum and Gallery, and Cathays Park (including municipal buildings modelled on those in New Delhi), and the Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral. The Welsh National Opera moved into the Wales Millennium Centre in November 2004.

Cardiff’s centre is a particularly green one with Bute Park, formally the castle grounds, extending northwards from the top of the Cardiff’s main shopping street (Queen Street); when combined with the adjacent Llandaff Fields to the northwest it produces a massive open space skirting the river Taff. Unfortunately Cardiff’s central green spaces are now under threat of development. Other popular parks include Roath Park in the north, donated to the city by the 3rd Marquess of Bute in 1887 and which includes a very popular boating lake; Victoria Park, Cardiff’s first official park; and Thompson’s Park, formerly home to an aviary removed in the 1970s.

The city has its own university, Cardiff University, as well as two University of Wales colleges, the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Cardiff has also been repeatedly mentioned in the BBC TV show Doctor Who, where it was often filmed. The mentions are a bit tongue-in-cheek, of the “Where are we? It’s not Cardiff again is it?” variety.

Cardiff hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1883, 1899, 1938, 1960 and 1978.

Cardiff Philatelic Society is the oldest Philatelic Society in Wales. It was formed in 1899.

The South Wales hardcore scene, one of the UK’s largest such music scenes, is largely centred in Cardiff.