62 Facts About Cardiff

Cardiff is the main commercial centre of Wales as well as the base for the Senedd.

Cardiff is a major centre for television and film production and is the Welsh base for the main national broadcasters.

Cardiff Bay contains the Senedd building and the Wales Millennium Centre arts complex.

Until the Roman conquest of Britain, Cardiff was part of the territory of the Silures – a Celtic British tribe that flourished in the Iron Age – whose territory included the areas that would become known as Breconshire, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan.

Coins from the reign of Gratian indicate that Cardiff was inhabited until at least the 4th century; the fort was abandoned towards the end of the 4th century, as the last Roman legions left the province of Britannia with Magnus Maximus.

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Cardiff Castle has been at the heart of the city ever since.

Besides serving an important political role in the governance of the fertile south Glamorgan coastal plain, Cardiff was a busy port in the Middle Ages and declared a staple port in 1327.

Cardiff became a Free Borough in 1542 and further Royal Charters were granted to it by Elizabeth I in 1600 and James I in 1608.

Cardiff became the main port for coal exports from the Cynon, Rhondda, and Rhymney valleys, and grew in population at a rate of nearly 80 per cent per decade between 1840 and 1870.

Much of this was due to migration from within and outside Wales: in 1841, a quarter of Cardiff's population were English-born and more than 10 per cent born in Ireland.

Cardiff faced a challenge in the 1880s when David Davies of Llandinam and the Barry Railway Company promoted rival docks at Barry.

Cardiff became a county borough on 1 April 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888.

East Moors Steelworks closed in 1978 and Cardiff lost population in the 1980s, consistent with a wider pattern of counter-urbanisation in Britain.

Between 1889 and 1974 Cardiff was a county borough governed by Cardiff County Borough Council .

Between 1974 and 1996, Cardiff was governed by Cardiff City Council, a district council of South Glamorgan.

Cardiff is divided into communities, several with their own community council and the rest governed directly by Cardiff City Council.

Centre of Cardiff is relatively flat and bounded by hills to the east, north and west.

Cardiff is built on reclaimed marshland on a bed of Triassic stones.

One of the Triassic rocks used in Cardiff is "Radyr Stone", a freestone which as its name suggests is quarried in the Radyr district.

Cardiff has imported some materials for buildings: Devonian sandstones from the Brecon Beacons has been used.

Cardiff is bordered to the west by the rural district of the Vale of Glamorgan, known as the Garden of Cardiff, to the east by the city of Newport; to the north by the South Wales Valleys, and to the south by the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel.

Between mid-2007 and mid-2008, Cardiff was the fastest-growing local authority in Wales, with growth of 1.

Cardiff has an ethnically diverse population due to past trading connections, post-war immigration and large numbers of foreign students who attend university in the city.

Cardiff has a chequered linguistic history with Welsh, English, Latin, Norse and Norman French preponderant at different times.

One study has found that Cardiff has speakers of at least 94 languages, with Somali, Urdu, Bengali and Arabic being the most commonly spoken foreign ones.

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Since 1922, Cardiff has included Llandaff within its boundary, along with the Anglican Llandaff Cathedral, the parish church of Llandaff and the seat of the Bishop of Llandaff, head of the Church in Wales and the Diocese of Llandaff.

The Orthodox Jewish community congregations are consolidated in the Cardiff United Synagogue in Cyncoed, which was dedicated by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in 2003.

Proportion of Cardiff residents declaring themselves Hindu, Sikh and Jewish were all considerably higher than the Welsh averages, but lower than the UK figures.

Cardiff today is the main finance and business services centre in Wales, with strong representation of finance and business services in the local economy.

Cardiff is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United Kingdom, receiving 18.

One result is that one in five employees in Cardiff is based in the distribution, hotels and restaurants sector, highlighting the growing retail and tourism industries in the city.

Cardiff is home to the Welsh media and a large media sector with BBC Cymru Wales, S4C and ITV Wales all having studios in the city.

Cardiff has several regeneration projects, such as St David's 2 Centre and surrounding areas of the city centre, and the £1.

Cardiff has a comprehensive bus network, whose providers include the municipal bus company Cardiff Bus, NAT Group, Stagecoach South Wales and First Cymru .

Cardiff University was founded by a royal charter in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, is a member of the Russell Group of leading research led universities, having most of its campus in Cathays and the city centre.

Cardiff has three state nursery schools, 98 state primary schools, and 19 state secondary schools .

Cardiff is home of the largest regional office of the International Baccalaureate Organisation .

Cardiff has many landmark buildings such as the Principality Stadium, Pierhead Building the Welsh National Museum and the Senedd building, the home of the Welsh Parliament.

Cardiff is famous for Cardiff Castle, St David's Hall, Llandaff Cathedral and the Wales Millennium Centre.

Cardiff Castle is a major tourist attraction in the city and is situated in the heart of the city centre.

The National History Museum at St Fagans in Cardiff is a large open-air museum housing dozens of buildings from throughout Welsh history that have been moved to the site in Cardiff.

Cardiff was a finalist in the European Capital of Culture 2008.

In recent years Cardiff has grown in stature as a tourist destination, with recent accolades including Cardiff being voted the eighth favourite UK city by readers of the Guardian.

Cardiff is unique in Wales in having two permanent stone circles used by the Gorsedd of Bards during Eisteddfodau.

Since 1983, Cardiff has hosted the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, a world-renowned event on the opera calendar which is held every two years.

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The largest of Cardiff's theatres is the New Theatre, situated in the city centre just off Queen Street.

Acts hailing from Cardiff include Charlotte Church, Shirley Bassey, Iwan Rheon, the Oppressed, Kids In Glass Houses, Los Campesinos, the Hot Puppies, the School, We're No Heroes, Budgie and Shakin' Stevens.

In 2010, Cardiff was named the UK's second "most musical" city by PRS for Music.

Cardiff has held a photomarathon in the city each year since 2004, in which photographers compete to take the best 12 pictures of 12 previously unknown topics in 12 hours.

Cardiff is one of the top ten retail destinations in the UK with Queen Street and St Mary Street as the two main shopping streets with the three shopping arcades, St David's Centre, Queens Arcade and the Capitol Centre.

Cardiff has a number of markets, including the vast Victorian indoor Cardiff Central Market and the newly established Riverside Community Market, which specialises in locally produced organic produce.

Cardiff is the Welsh base for the main national broadcasters .

Major filming studios in Cardiff include the BBC's Roath Lock Studios and Pinewood Studios Wales.

Radio stations serving the city and based in Cardiff include Capital FM, Heart, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, Nation Radio, Radio Cardiff, Smooth Radio and Xpress Radio.

In 2009, Cardiff hosted the first Ashes cricket test between England and Australia to be held in Wales.

Cardiff hosted eight football matches of the London 2012 Olympics.

Cardiff City are the only non-English team to have won the FA Cup, beating Arsenal in the 1927 final at Wembley Stadium.

The relocation of the club to Cardiff did not happen; in 2003, the club moved to Milton Keynes and a year later rebranded as Milton Keynes Dons.

Cardiff has a long association with boxing, from 'Peerless' Jim Driscoll — born in Cardiff in 1880 — to more recent, high-profile fights staged in the city.

Many notable people have hailed from Cardiff, ranging from historical figures such as the 12th-century Welsh leader Ifor Bach to more recent figures such as Roald Dahl, Ken Follett, Griff Rhys Jones, Catrin Dafydd, and the former Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones.

International rugby league players from Cardiff include Frank Whitcombe, Billy Boston, David Willicombe and Colin Dixon.

Cardiff was a British Christian monk, bishop, and founder of monasteries and churches.