St Fagans National History Museum

St Fagans National History Museum

Set in the stunning grounds of a 400-year old castle on the outskirts of Cardiff, St Fagans National History Museum is one of the world's best open-air museums. The Museum is home to over forty original historic buildings that have been moved from different parts of the county to tell the stories of how the peoples of Wales have lived, worked and enjoyed themselves through the ages. The Museum includes a medieval church, farmhouses and Victorian schoolroom and a working bakery, blacksmith, corn mill, woollen mill and clogmaker's workshop. The Museum's 1930's style Gwalia Tearooms, the Castle Buttery and a Cafe in an old pottery all serve a good old fashioned cup of tea and traditional ‘Bara brith' (a Welsh fruit cake). St Fagans is currently undergoing a huge transformation with new galleries and even more historic buildings in the pipeline. Look out for the Museum's specialist builders working on building a Medieval Princes' Hall and an Iron Age Farm. The Museum is one of the UK's top ten free attractions as voted by users of TripAdvisor.

Review

It is no wonder that St Fagans is constantly winning tourism awards, and why thousands of not only tourists but local people visit here on a daily basis. Just as you walk around, you get absorbed into the charming atmosphere that radiates from every building that has delicately been taken down piece by piece and painstakingly resurrected on the land here at St Fagans, just as if it had always existed there. Welsh history's in safe hands today as all the team members employed at St Fagans are so passionate about the role they have to play in preserving everything here for the future. You'll certainly need to leave three or four hours free in your diary, as you are taken swiftly into the past of Wales's rich and complex history, and with new additions to the site in forthcoming years, I may raise that to reserving a whole day to visiting this Top 100 Attraction.