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a hotel in cardiff

Cardiff Origins.

Archaeological evidence from sites in and around Cardiff—the St Lythans burial chamber, near Wenvoe (about four miles (6 km) west, south west of Cardiff city centre), the Tinkinswood burial chamber, near St Nicholas (about six miles (10 km) west of Cardiff city centre), the Cae'rarfau Chambered Tomb, Creigiau (about six miles (10 km) north west of Cardiff city centre) and the Gwern y Cleppa Long Barrow, near Coedkernew, Newport (about eight and a quarter miles (13 km) north east of Cardiff city centre)—shows that Neolithic people had settled in the area by at least around 6,000 BP (Before Present), about 1,500 years before either Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed.

A group of five Bronze Age tumuli is at the summit of The Garth (Welsh: Mynydd y Garth), within the county's northern boundary.

Four Iron Age hill fort and enclosure sites have been identified within Cardiff's present-day county boundaries, including Caerau Hillfort, an enclosed area of 5 hectares (51,000 m2).

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.

The 3-hectare (8-acre) fort established by the Romans near the mouth of the River Taff in 75 CE (Common Era), in what would become the north western boundary of the centre of Cardiff, was built over an extensive settlement that had been established by the Silures in the 50s CE.

The fort was one of a series of military outposts associated with Isca Augusta (Caerleon) that acted as border defences.

The fort may have been abandoned in the early 2nd century as the area had been subdued, however by this time a civilian settlement, or vicus, was established.

It was likely made up of traders who made a living from the fort, ex-soldiers and their families.

A Roman villa has been discovered at Ely.

Contemporary with the Saxon Shore Forts of the 3rd and 4th centuries, a stone fortress was established at Cardiff.

Similar to the shore forts, the fortress was built to protect Britannia from raiders.

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.

Little is known about the fort and civilian settlement in the period between the Roman departure from Britain and the Norman Conquest.

Historian William Rees suggests that the settlement probably shrank in size and may even have been abandoned.

In the absence of Roman rule, Wales was divided into small kingdoms; early on, Meurig ap Tewdrig emerged as the local king in Glywysing (which later became Glamorgan).

The area passed through his family until the advent of the Normans in the 11th century.

In 1081 William I, King of England, began work on the castle keep within the walls of the old Roman fort.

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

The castle was substantially altered and extended during the Victorian period by John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, and the architect William Burges.

Original Roman work can, however, still be distinguished in the wall facings.

A small town grew up in the shadow of the castle, made up primarily of settlers from England.

Cardiff had a population of between 1,500 and 2,000 in the Middle Ages, a relatively normal size for a Welsh town in this period.

By the end of the 13th century, Cardiff was the only town in Wales with a population exceeding 2,000, but it was relatively small compared with most notable towns in the Kingdom of England.

In the early 12th century a wooden palisade was erected around the city to protect it.

Cardiff was a busy port in the Middle Ages, and was declared a Staple port in 1327.

Henry II travelled through Cardiff on his journey to Ireland and had a premonition against the holding of Sunday markets at St Piran's Chapel, which stood in the middle of the road between the castle entrance and Westgate.

In 1404 Owain Glyndŵr burned Cardiff and took Cardiff Castle.

As the town was still very small, most of the buildings were made of wood and the town was destroyed.

However, the town was soon rebuilt and began to flourish once again.

In 1536, the Act of Union between England and Wales led to the creation of the shire of Glamorgan, and Cardiff was made the county town.

It also became part of Kibbor hundred.

Around this same time the Herbert family became the most powerful family in the area.

In 1538, Henry VIII closed the Dominican and Franciscan friaries in Cardiff, the remains of which were used as building materials - see also .

A writer around this period described Cardiff: "The River Taff runs under the walls of his honours castle and from the north part of the town to the south part where there is a fair quay and a safe harbour for shipping".

Cardiff had become a Free Borough in 1542.

In 1573, it was made a head port for collection of customs duties, and in 1581, Elizabeth I granted Cardiff its first royal charter.

Pembrokeshire historian George Owen described Cardiff in 1602 as "the fayrest towne in Wales yett not the welthiest.

", and the town gained a second Royal Charter in 1608.

Disastrous flooding led to a change in the course of the River Taff and the ruining of St Mary's Parish Church, which was replaced by its chapel of ease, St John the Baptist.

During the Second English Civil War, St Fagans just to the west of the town, played host to the Battle of St Fagans.

The battle, between a Royalist rebellion and a New Model Army detachment, was a decisive victory for the Parliamentarians and allowed Oliver Cromwell to conquer Wales.

It is the last major battle to occur in Wales, with about 200 (mostly Royalist) soldiers killed.

In the ensuing century Cardiff was at peace.

In 1766, John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute married into the Herbert family and was later created Baron Cardiff, and in 1778 he began renovations on Cardiff Castle.

In the 1790s a racecourse, printing press, bank and coffee house all opened, and Cardiff gained a stagecoach service to London.

Despite these improvements, Cardiff's position in the Welsh urban hierarchy had declined over the 18th century.

Iolo Morgannwg called it "an obscure and inconsiderable place", and the 1801 census found the population to be only 1,870, making Cardiff only the 25th largest town in Wales, well behind Merthyr and Swansea.

Cardiff Docks—from where coal was shipped throughout the world - In 1793, John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute was born.

He would spend his life building the Cardiff docks and would later be called "the creator of modern Cardiff".

A twice-weekly boat service between Cardiff and Bristol was established in 1815, and in 1821, the Cardiff Gas Works was established.

After the Napoleonic Wars Cardiff entered a period of social and industrial unrest, starting with the trial and hanging of Dic Penderyn in 1831.

The town grew rapidly from the 1830s onwards, when the Marquess of Bute built a dock which eventually linked to the Taff Vale Railway.

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

Much of the growth was due to migration from within and outside Wales: in 1841, a quarter of Cardiff's population were English-born and more than 10% had been born in Ireland.

By the 1881 census, Cardiff had overtaken both Merthyr and Swansea to become the largest town in Wales.

Cardiff's new status as the premier town in South Wales was confirmed when it was chosen as the and site of the University College South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1893.

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

Barry docks had the advantage of being accessible in all tides, and David Davies claimed that his venture would cause "grass to grow in the streets of Cardiff".

From 1901 coal exports from Barry surpassed those from Cardiff, but the administration of the coal trade remained centred on Cardiff, in particular its Coal Exchange, where the price of coal on the British market was determined and the first million-pound deal was struck in 1907.

The city also strengthened its industrial base with the decision of the owners of the Dowlais Ironworks in Merthyr (who would later form part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds) to build a new steelworks close to the docks at East Moors, which was opened on 4 February 1891 by Lord Bute.

King Edward VII granted Cardiff city status on 28 October 1905, and the city acquired a Roman Catholic Cathedral in 1916.

In subsequent years an increasing number of national institutions were located in the city, including the National Museum of Wales, Welsh National War Memorial, and the University of Wales Registry Building—however, it was denied the National Library of Wales, partly because the library's founder, Sir John Williams, considered Cardiff to have "a non-Welsh population".

After a brief post-war boom, Cardiff docks entered a prolonged decline in the interwar period.

By 1936, their trade was less than half its value in 1913, reflecting the slump in demand for Welsh coal.

Bomb damage during the Cardiff Blitz in World War II included the devastation of Llandaff Cathedral, and in the immediate postwar years the city's link with the Bute family came to an end.

The city was proclaimed capital city of Wales on 20 December 1955, by a written reply by the Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George.

Caernarfon had also vied for this title.

Cardiff therefore celebrated two important anniversaries in 2005.

The Encyclopedia of Wales notes that the decision to recognise the city as the capital of Wales "had more to do with the fact that it contained marginal Conservative constituencies than any reasoned view of what functions a Welsh capital should have".

Although the city hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1958, Cardiff only became a centre of national administration with the establishment of the Welsh Office in 1964, which later prompted the creation of various other public bodies such as the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Development Agency, most of which were based in Cardiff.

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

However, it recovered and was one of the few cities (outside London) where population grew during the 1990s.

During this period the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was promoting the redevelopment of south Cardiff; an evaluation of the regeneration of Cardiff Bay published in 2004 concluded that the project had "reinforced the competitive position of Cardiff" and "contributed to a massive improvement in the quality of the built environment", although it had failed "to attract the major inward investors originally anticipated".

In the 1997 devolution referendum, Cardiff voters rejected the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales by 55% to 44% on a 47% turnout, which Denis Balsom partly ascribed to a general preference in Cardiff and some other parts of Wales for a 'British' rather than exclusively 'Welsh' identity.

The relative lack of support for the Assembly locally, and difficulties between the Welsh Office and Cardiff Council in acquiring the original preferred venue, Cardiff City Hall, encouraged other local authorities to bid to house the Assembly.

However, the Assembly eventually located at Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay in 1999; in 2005, a new debating chamber on an adjacent site, designed by Richard Rogers, was opened.

The city was county town of Glamorgan until the council reorganisation in 1974 paired Cardiff and the now Vale of Glamorgan together as the new county of South Glamorgan.

Further local government restructuring in 1996 resulted in Cardiff city's district council becoming a unitary authority, the City and County of Cardiff, with the addition of Creigiau and Pentyrch.

Cardiff Bay is regarded as one of the most successful regeneration projects in the UK and a magnet for tourists but also locals who visit the bars and restaurants in the pier.

As we stayed in Cardiff Bay we visited the waterfront area every day and also did one of the regular boat tours of the Barrage.

The Barrage lies across the mouth of Cardiff bay, a massive civil engineering project in the former docklands area, it created a large freshwater lake.

Cardiff Bay also houses the National Assembly for Wales building, Techniquest a science and discovery centre, a 5 star hotel and The Red Dragon shopping and entertainment complex.

As you walk along the bay you will come across Mermaid Quay with a mix of restaurants, some with singing waiters, bars, cafes and shops.

Look out for an American style diner.

Roald Dahl Plass is a large open amphitheatre style plaza that takes you up to the bay.

You will also see fairground rides there.

At the other end of the Plass is the Wales Millennium Centre which is home to the Welsh National Opera.

Many of these sites would be familiar to television viewers of Doctor Who and Torchwood, especially the area outside the large water tower feature.

A recent addition to the area is the statue of the composer Ivor Novello.

The Norwegian Church which is now an Arts centre, is a wooden church that was rebuilt in 1992, the children's author Roald Dahl was christened in this church.

Take a bay tour by boat and learn about its history and development.

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hotel in cardiff

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis.

The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms and air conditioning or climate control.

Additional common features found in hotel rooms are a telephone, an alarm clock, a television, a safe, a mini-bar with snack foods and drinks, and facilities for making tea and coffee.

Luxury features include bathrobes and slippers, a pillow menu, twin-sink vanities, and jacuzzi bathtubs.

Larger hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a restaurant, swimming pool, fitness center, business center, childcare, conference facilities and social function services.

Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room.

Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement.

In the United Kingdom, a hotel is required by law to serve food and drinks to all guests within certain stated hours.

In Japan, capsule hotels provide a minimized amount of room space and shared facilities.

The word hotel is derived from the French hotel (coming from hote meaning host), which referred to a French version of a townhouse or any other building seeing frequent visitors, rather than a place offering accommodation.

In contemporary French usage, hotel now has the same meaning as the English term, and hotel particulier is used for the old meaning.

The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare.

The circumflex replaces the 's' found in the earlier hostel spelling, which over time took on a new, but closely related meaning.

Grammatically, hotels usually take the definite article – hence "The Astoria Hotel" or simply "The Astoria.

" Hotel operations in a hotel vary in size, function, and cost.

Most hotels and major hospitality companies that operate hotels have set widely accepted industry standards to classify hotel types.

General categories include the following; * Upscale Luxury o Examples include Conrad Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Dorchester Collection,and JW Marriott Hotels * Full Service o Examples include Hilton, Marriott, Hotel Indigo, Doubletree, and Hyatt * Select Service o Examples include Holiday Inn, Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn * Limited Service o Examples include Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Fairfield Inn, Days Inn, and La Quinta Inns & Suites * Extended Stay o Examples include Staybridge Suites, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Residence Inn by Marriott, and Extended Stay Hotels * Timeshare o Examples include Holiday Inn Club Vacations, Marriott Vacation Club International, Westgate Resorts, and Disney Vacation Club * Destination Club Hotel management is a significant career.

Larger hotels may operate with an extensive management structure consisting of a General Manager which serves as the head executive, department heads that oversee various departments, middle managers, administrative staff, and line-level supervisors.

Degree programs such as hospitality management studies, a business degree, and/or certification programs prepare hotel managers for industry practice.

Some hotels have gained their renown through tradition, by hosting significant events or persons, such as Schloss Cecilienhof in Potsdam, Germany, which derives its fame from the Potsdam Conference of the World War II allies Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin in 1945.

The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai is one of India's most famous and historic hotels because of its association with the Indian independence movement.

Some establishments have given name to a particular meal or beverage, as is the case with the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, United States where the Waldorf Salad was first created or the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, Austria, home of the Sachertorte.

Others have achieved fame by association with dishes or cocktails created on their premises, such as the Hotel de Paris where the crêpe Suzette was invented or the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where the Singapore Sling cocktail was devised.

A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London, through its association with Irving Berlin's song, 'Puttin' on the Ritz'.

The Algonquin Hotel in New York City is famed as the meeting place of the literary group, the Algonquin Round Table, and Hotel Chelsea, also in New York City, has been the subject of a number of songs and the scene of the stabbing of Nancy Spungen (allegedly by her boyfriend Sid Vicious).

Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dint of unusual features of the lodging or its immediate environment: Boutique hotels are typically hotels like with a unique environment.

Some hotels are built with living trees as structural elements, for example the Costa Rica Tree House in the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica; the Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya; the Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil, on the Rio Negro in the Amazon; and Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey.

In Nax Mont-Noble, a little ski resort situated on 1300 metres in the Swiss Alps, construction for the Maya Guesthouse will start in September 2011.

It will be the first hotel in Europe built entirely with straw bales.

Due to the isolation values of the walls it will need no heating.

The Null Stern Hotel in Teufen, Appenzellerland, Switzerland and the Concrete Mushrooms in Albaniaare former nuclear bunkers transformed into hotels.

Shoe hotels are hotels built into a giant shoe.

The idea was inspired by the "Old Woman who lived in a shoe" myth.

The largest such hotel is currently in Hokkaido, Japan.

The most popular shoe hotels are modelled after a woman's platform dancing shoe.

The Cuevas Pedro Antonio de AlarcOn (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground.

The Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia is built into the remains of an opal mine.

Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotel that are found in Japan, where people sleep in stacks of rectangular containers.

The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, and the Hotel de Glace in Duschenay, Canada, melt every spring and are rebuilt each winter; the Mammut Snow Hotel in Finland is located within the walls of the Kemi snow castle; and the Lainio Snow Hotel is part of a snow village near Ylläs, Finland.

Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, include Gravetye Manor, the home of garden designer William Robinson, and Cliveden, designed by Charles Barry with a rose garden by Geoffrey Jellicoe.

Some hotels have accommodation underwater, such as Utter Inn in Lake Malaren, Sweden.

Hydropolis, project cancelled 2004 in Dubai, would have had suites on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, and Jules Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida requires scuba diving to access its rooms.

Other unusual hotels - RMS Queen Mary, Long Beach, California, United States.

* The Library Hotel in New York City, is unique in that each of its ten floors is assigned one category from the Dewey Decimal System.

* The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a boat's sail.

* The Jailhotel Lowengraben in Lucerne, Switzerland is a converted prison now used as a hotel.

* The Luxor, a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States is unusual due to its pyramidal structure.

* The Liberty Hotel in Boston, used to be the Charles Street Jail.

* Built in Scotland and completed in 1936, The former ocean liner RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, United States uses its first-class staterooms as a hotel, after retiring in 1967 from Transatlantic service.

* There are several hotels throughout the world built into converted airliners.

Some hotels are built specifically to create a captive trade, example at casinos and holiday resorts.

Though of course hotels have always been built in popular destinations, the defining characteristic of a resort hotel is that it exists purely to serve another attraction, the two having the same owners.

In Las Vegas there is a tradition of one-upmanship with luxurious and extravagant hotels in a concentrated area known as the Las Vegas Strip.

This trend now has extended to other resorts worldwide, but the concentration in Las Vegas is still the world's highest: nineteen of the world's twenty-five largest hotels by room count are on the Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms.

In Europe Center Parcs might be considered a chain of resort hotels, since the sites are largely man-made (though set in natural surroundings such as country parks) with captive trade, whereas holiday camps such as Butlins and Pontin's are probably not considered as resort hotels, since they are set at traditional holiday destinations which existed before the camps.

Frequently, expanding railway companies built grand hotels at their termini, such as the Midland Hotel, Manchester next to the former Manchester Central Station and in London the ones above St Pancras railway station and Charing Cross railway station also in London is the Chiltern Court Hotel above Baker Street tube station and Canada's grand railway hotels.

They are or were mostly, but not exclusively, used by those travelling by rail.

A motel (motor hotel) is a hotel like which is for a short stay, usually for a night, for motorists on long journeys.

It has direct access from the room to the vehicle (for example a central parking lot around which the buildings are set), and is built conveniently close to major roads and intersections.

In 2006, Guinness World Records listed the First World Hotel in Genting Highlands, Malaysia as the world's largest hotel with a total of 6,118 rooms.

Similarly, the Venetian Palazzo Complex, in Las Vegas, has the most number of rooms.

It has 7,117 rooms followed by MGM Grand Hotel, which contains 6,852 rooms.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest hotel like still in operation is the Hoshi Ryokan, in the Awazu Onsen area of Komatsu, Japan which opened in 718.

The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel.

Located on the top of Hong Kong's tallest building, the 488 meter tall International Commerce Centre.

Some hotels sell individual rooms to investors.

Timeshare is an example of this kind of investment.

The buyer is allowed to stay in the room without charge or at a reduced rate for a given number of days each year.

The investor is paid a share of the takings for the room.

Rooms can be sold on a leasehold basis, sometimes on a 999 year lease.

Room owners are free to sell at any time.

A number of public figures have notably chosen to take up semi-permanent or permanent residence in hotels.

* Actor Richard Harris lived at the Savoy Hotel while in London.

Hotel archivist Susan Scott recounts an anecdote that when he was being taken out of the building on a stretcher shortly before his death he raised his hand and told the diners "it was the food.

" * Inventor Nikola Tesla lived the last 10 years of his life at the New Yorker Hotel until 1943 when he died in the hotel room.

* Millionaire Howard Hughes lived his last few years in a Las Vegas hotel.

* Egyptian actor Ahmad Zaki lived his last 15 years in Ramses Hilton Hotel – Cairo.

* Larry Fine (of the Three Stooges) and his family lived in hotels, due to his extravagant spending habits and his wife's dislike for housekeeping.

They first lived in the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his daughter Phyllis was raised, then the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood.

Not until the late 1940s did Larry buy a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.

* General Douglas McArthur lived his last 14 years in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

* American actress Elaine Stritch lived in the Savoy Hotel in London for over a decade.

* Fashion designer Coco Chanel lived in the Hotel Ritz Paris on and off for more than 30 years.

* Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera lived in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland from 1961 until his death in 1977.

* British entrepreneur Jack Lyons lived in the Hotel Mirador Kempinski in Switzerland for several years until his death in 2008.

Hotels like have been used as the settings for television programmes such as the British situation comedies Fawlty Towers and I'm Alan Partridge, the British soap opera Crossroads, and in films such as the Bates Motel in Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho and The Dolphin Hotel in 1408, a short story by Stephen King which was adapted into a 2007 film.

Another is Tipton Hotel, a fictitious hotel in Disney's "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody".

When the show later became a spinoff into "The Suite Life on Deck," the Tipton evolved into the SS Tipton, run by the same company.

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