Cardiff is one of Britain's cheapest capitals: the national museum charges nothing, the parks and the barrage are free, and Chippy Lane feeds you for under a tenner. Three days built around free galleries, market stalls and cliff-top views.
Free entry to Wales' national collection: the Davies Sisters' Impressionist bequest including Monet and Van Gogh's Rain at Auvers, the Evolution of Wales galleries and a suspended basking shark. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
William Burges' 1890 menagerie of carved beasts — lioness, seal, bear, hyena, apes — sits on the wall along Castle Street, free to see from the pavement. Six more creatures were added in 1931 when the wall was moved west.
A 40-minute riverside walk up the Taff Trail reaches Wales' oldest cathedral site, founded in 1120. Entry is free with a £3 suggested donation, and Epstein's aluminium Christ in Majesty hangs on a concrete arch over the nave.
Cardiff's Victorian park is free and open dawn to dusk: a 30-acre lake, the 1915 lighthouse memorial to Captain Scott's Terra Nova, which sailed from Cardiff in 1910, and a Grade II conservatory you can enter for nothing.
The 1891 covered market under a glazed barrel roof: Welsh cakes hot off the bakestone from about £1 each, a bacon roll for £4 at the upstairs caffs, and cockles and laverbread at Ashton's fishmongers. Mon–Sat 08:00–17:30.
Sundays 10:00–14:00 on Fitzhamon Embankment beside the Taff, Wales' first certified farmers' market. Browsing and samples are free; a Welsh lamb burger or a slice of bara brith runs £4–7 with the stadium roof behind the stalls.
Cardiff's cheapest eating street runs nearly a mile through Roath: Turkish charcoal grills, Bangladeshi curry houses, Iraqi bakeries and Chinese supermarkets. A mixed shish plate is around £10, a bakery flatbread under £2.
A 100-metre alley between St Mary Street and The Hayes, lined end to end with takeaways since the 1970s. The Cardiff order is a chips, cheese, curry and doner box for roughly £7, served until the early hours at weekends.
The mile-long barrage that sealed the bay in 1999 is free to walk or cycle, past the bascule bridges, the three fish-pass locks and views back to the Pierhead Building. Gates open roughly 06:00–21:00 in summer.
The white timber seamen's church of 1868 where Roald Dahl was christened, dismantled and rebuilt on the waterfront in 1992. Entry and the gallery are free; the café does bara brith and a coffee for about £5. Daily 10:00–16:00.
The 1895 Grade II pier and its 1929 Art Deco pavilion sit at the far end of the barrage walk. The 200-metre deck costs nothing, the pavilion gallery is free, and the tiny cinema screens films from about £6.
A stepped path climbs from the Esplanade onto the Wales Coast Path, where lias cliffs look out over Flat Holm, Steep Holm and the Somerset shore across the Bristol Channel — the second-highest tidal range on earth.