Things to Do in Cardiff

Editor's picks

A local's shortlist — the places worth your time first, each with a tip.

Cardiff Castle & Bute Park

Landmark · City centre, at the top of St Mary Street

A Roman fort wall, a Norman motte and William Burges's riotous Victorian Gothic interiors for the third Marquess of Bute, with 130 acres of parkland running north behind it along the Taff.

Local tip: The Bute family gave the castle and the park to the city in 1947, which is why the green wedge runs unbroken from the castle wall out to Llandaff — you can walk or cycle from the city centre to the cathedral entirely through parkland. The Burges interiors need the paid tour; the Animal Wall along the south side is free and better than it sounds.

The Victorian & Edwardian arcades

Culture · Between St Mary Street, the Hayes and Queen Street

Six surviving glass-roofed shopping arcades — Castle, High Street, Morgan, Royal, Wyndham and Duke Street — threaded between the main streets, full of independent shops.

Local tip: Cardiff has more surviving Victorian and Edwardian arcades than any other UK city and calls itself the City of Arcades because of them. Spillers in Morgan Arcade claims to be the oldest record shop in the world, trading since 1894. Walk them in the rain, which is when the roofs earn their keep.

Cardiff Bay, the Senedd & Butetown

Landmark · Two miles south of the centre

The old Tiger Bay docks, cut off from the tide by the barrage in 1999 and turned into a freshwater lake, with the Senedd, the Wales Millennium Centre and the Norwegian Church around it.

Local tip: Read the Millennium Centre's inscription before you go in — Gwyneth Lewis's 'Creu Gwir fel Gwydr o Ffwrnais Awen' and 'In These Stones Horizons Sing', in six-foot letters, and not a translation of one another. Behind the waterfront is Butetown, one of Britain's oldest multi-ethnic communities, whose history is the reason Cardiff exists at the scale it does. The Bay is the postcard; Butetown is the story.

City Road & Albany Road, Roath

Food · A mile north-east of the centre

The best eating in Cardiff, in a run of Turkish grills, Persian bakeries, Indian and Bangladeshi kitchens, Chinese supermarkets and late-night cafes along two ordinary residential high streets.

Local tip: City Road does the grills and the late hours; Albany Road does the delis, the bakeries and the daytime. Go on a weekday evening, order at a counter rather than a table, and ignore any list that sends you to the Bay for dinner.

Womanby Street

Nightlife · City centre, under the castle wall

A single short street of small music venues — Clwb Ifor Bach, Fuel, the Moon — that has been the spine of Cardiff's live scene for forty years.

Local tip: The 'Save Womanby Street' campaign in 2017 fought off flats and a hotel that would have closed the venues by noise complaint, and won planning protection for the street. Clwb Ifor Bach was founded in 1983 as a Welsh-language club and still is one — the name means Little Ifor's Club, and Welsh-language gigs are a large part of what it does.

Roath Park & the Scott Memorial Lighthouse

Hidden gem

Nature · Roath, two miles north-east of the centre

A long Victorian park built along a dammed brook, with a boating lake, a botanic glasshouse and a small white lighthouse standing in the water at the southern end.

Local tip: The lighthouse is a memorial to Captain Scott, whose Terra Nova sailed for Antarctica from Cardiff on 15 June 1910 and never came back — the city funded much of the expedition, which is why the memorial is here rather than in London. There is a model of the ship inside. Most people who feed the ducks beside it have no idea what it is.

Explore 129 places across Cardiff

Museums, landmarks, monuments, heritage sites and parks — mapped, with photos. The most notable spots first.

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Museum · 4Landmark · 26Monument · 7Religious · 73Archaeological · 5Park · 12Attraction · 2Open in OpenStreetMap

Museums & galleries

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Photograph unavailable National Museum Cardiff

Museum

National Museum Cardiff

Main site of the national museum of Wales, United Kingdom

Editor's picks

Cardiff Castle & Bute Park

The Victorian & Edwardian arcades

Cardiff Bay, the Senedd & Butetown

City Road & Albany Road, Roath

Womanby Street

Roath Park & the Scott Memorial Lighthouse

Explore 129 places across Cardiff

Museums & galleries

National Museum Cardiff

Firing Line: Cardiff Castle Museum of the Welsh Soldier

Canfas Gallery

Nantgarw China Works Museum

Landmarks & architecture

Caerphilly Castle

Castell Coch

St Fagans Castle

Ruperra Castle

Barry Castle

Morgraig Castle

Craig Ruperra Motte

Caerau Hillfort

Caer Castell

Central Square

Twmpath Motte

Bishop's Palace

Cardiff Bridge

Morganstown Castle Mound

Callaghan Square

Porthkerry Viaduct

Loudoun Square

Dinas Powys Castle

Cefn Mably House

Wenvoe Castle

Walnut Tree Viaduct

Old Leckwith Bridge

Van House

Hensol Castle

Castell Meredydd

Insole Court

Monuments & memorials

Wales Genocide Memorial

Statue of Betty Campbell

Scott Memorial

Memorial to Joseph Benjamin Hemingway in St Mellons churchyard

Rumney War Memorial

The Family

Aneurin Bevan

Places of worship

Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral

Al-Manar Centre

Norwegian Church

St Margaret's Church

Cardiff United Synagogue

St Mary's Church, Cardiff

Baitur Raheem Mosque

St Patrick's Church

St Paul's Church

St Teilo's Church

St German's Church

St Peter's Church

Church of St John the Evangelist, Cardiff

St Anne's Church

Crwys Road Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel

St Martin's Church

St Mary of the Angels R C Church, Canton

St Mary the Virgin Church

Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Chapel

St Augustine's Church

City United Reformed Church

Roath Park English Presbyterian Church

St Peter's Church

Eglwys Dewi Sant

Pen-Rhiw Unitarian Chapel

St Edward's Church

Church of St James, Rudry

St Catherine's Church

Church of St. John the Baptist

St Saviour's Church