Cardiff is the capital of Wales since 1955. It is a city of the broad Severn estuary which extends into the Bristol Channel. It experienced a tremendous upswing in importance during the increasing industrialization of the last 150 years. It is both the cultural centre (with a university) and the economic centre of principality. A Roman from was founded here in the 1st century AD. The character of the city was granted in 1147. As a result firstly of the construction in 1794 of the canal leading into the coalmining area of Merthyr Tyafil (the economic centre at that time) and secondly of the enormous harbour and docks, which were built around 1830 for shipping coal, the population rose from 1000 inhabitants in c 1800 to the present figure about 300000. The foundation of the National Museum of Wales in 1907 and of the Walsh University of Wales in 1893 helped Cardiff become a cultural centre. Financially and industrially, Cardiff is the most important city in Wales. Hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of Wales live and work in this town and the adjoining county of Glamorgan, which have drained the valleys and mountains in their ceaseless river of coal from Rhondda Valley on its journey to the ends of the earth. In the roads leading to the docks of Cardiff you will find, much as in Liverpool, Marseilles or any other great comercial port, the extraordinary mixture of humanity that great ocean-going ships always seem to attract. Here you will find little that is typically Welsh, here is Tiger Bay. But away from the docks Cardiff is a beautiful city. Cathay's Park is the centre of the civic life of the city with its exceptionally fine group of municipal buildings. A few miles to the north of Cardiff lies Caerphilly, noted both for its cheese and for its fine old Edwardian castle. Choral singing is a national art. It is fine thing to hear the spectators' hymns at a Welsh victory over England at the national game of Rugby football at Cardiff. All the Welsh teams are likely to have been chosen from towns within a hour's journey of Cardiff.