Attraction in Cardiff

The National Museum Cardiff, known locally as Cardiff Museum, is one of the finest museums and art galleries in the United Kingdom, housing collections of natural history, archaeology, geology and fine and applied art in an imposing neoclassical building in Cardiff's Civic Centre. The art collection is exceptional, including major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh acquired through the munificent bequest of the Davies sisters of Llandinam. The natural history galleries cover Welsh geology from the Precambrian to the present with important fossil collections and the world's largest preserved leatherback turtle. Admission is free, making it one of the most remarkable free cultural institutions in the United Kingdom.

St Fagans National Museum of History is one of Europe's finest open-air museums and Wales's most visited heritage attraction, an extraordinary collection of historic buildings gathered from across the country and rebuilt in the grounds of St Fagans Castle near Cardiff to create a living landscape of Welsh history spanning two millennia. The museum was established in 1948 in the castle and grounds donated to the people of Wales by the Earl of Plymouth, and has grown over the decades into a collection of over forty reconstructed buildings that represent the physical fabric of Welsh life from the Iron Age to the twentieth century. The range of buildings within the museum is genuinely remarkable. The collection includes an Iron Age Celtic roundhouse, a Norman motte and bailey earthwork, medieval merchant's houses, a sixteenth-century farmhouse, a Victorian schoolroom, a working woollen mill, a row of ironworkers' cottages from Merthyr Tydfil and a prefabricated aluminium bungalow from the post-war housing emergency. Each building has been carefully dismantled at its original location, transported to St Fagans and reconstructed using traditional methods and materials, then furnished and interpreted to reflect its life at specific periods. Several of the buildings contain working demonstrations that bring the past into sensory contact with visitors. The working smithy, the corn mill, the woollen mill with its clattering looms and the traditional bakery all operate regularly, filling the air with the sounds and smells of historical working processes. The result is that St Fagans functions as a genuinely educational experience as well as a visual one, providing an understanding of how people actually lived and worked rather than simply presenting their material culture for passive observation. The castle at the centre of the estate, a sixteenth-century manor house, contains galleries exploring Welsh history, culture and identity through collections of costume, domestic objects and art. Recent redevelopment has added substantial new exhibition spaces and significantly improved the visitor facilities. Admission to the museum is free, making it one of the best-value cultural destinations in Wales.

Techniquest is Wales's national science discovery centre, located in Cardiff Bay, providing interactive science and technology exhibits for visitors of all ages in a purpose-built building overlooking the regenerated waterfront of Cardiff Bay. Opened in 1995 as part of the regeneration of Cardiff Bay, Techniquest was one of the pioneering interactive science centres in the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular visitor attractions in Wales. The centre houses over one hundred interactive science exhibits covering physics, engineering, biology and technology, accompanied by a planetarium, science theatre and dedicated facilities for school groups. The Cardiff Bay waterfront setting provides a pleasant environment for a day out combining science discovery with waterfront dining and the nearby Senedd and Wales Millennium Centre.