Cardiff packs a conservatoire, a national opera house, one of Europe's largest arts centres and a 100-acre open-air museum into a city of 370,000. This route trades castle queues for Epstein sculpture, backstage tours and Welsh-language music.
Jacob Epstein's aluminium Christ in Majesty rides a concrete parabolic arch over the nave, rebuilt after a 1941 landmine gutted the church. Rossetti's 1864 Seed of David triptych and John Piper's glass sit in the side chapels.
Victorian Gothic mansion of coal shipper James Harvey Insole, saved from demolition by volunteers after decades of decay. The oak staircase, billiard room and Grade II*-registered gardens are free to wander; café open 09:00–16:00.
A 1907 board school turned into one of Europe's largest arts centres: two galleries of contemporary Welsh and international art, two cinemas running subtitled world film, 60 artist studios upstairs and a bar with 100-plus Belgian beers.
The 1886 Coal Exchange set the world price of steam coal and reputedly saw Britain's first million-pound cheque signed in 1904. Its oak-panelled trading floor is now a hotel lobby, ringed by Butetown's Edwardian shipping offices.
The Welsh conservatoire, rebuilt in 2011 around the 400-seat Dora Stoutzker Hall and the glass-fronted Linbury Gallery overlooking Bute Park. Student recitals run most weekday lunchtimes, with jazz, chamber and opera scenes at night.
Portland-stone temple of 1938, paid for by Lord Davies of Llandinam as a memorial to the Welsh dead of the Great War. The Hall of Nations is lined in black marble, with a Book of Remembrance in the crypt below the rotunda.
Jonathan Adams's slate-and-steel shell carries Gwyneth Lewis's bilingual poem cut in two-metre letters as windows. Tours cross the 1,897-seat Donald Gordon Theatre stage, the fly tower and the Welsh National Opera rehearsal rooms.
Edwardian playhouse of 1906 with three gilded tiers and 1,144 seats, Cardiff's main touring house since opera moved to the Bay. Welsh National Opera, Ballet Cymru and touring drama fill most weeks of the season.
Fifty re-erected buildings across 100 acres: the 1520 Llainfadyn cottage, St Teilo's medieval church repainted in pre-Reformation reds and ochres, and six Rhyd-y-car ironworkers' houses furnished for 1805, 1855, 1925, 1955, 1985.
Grade II-listed iron-and-glass hall of 1891 built over the old town gaol, two galleried floors under a barrel-vaulted roof. Ashton's fishmongers sells cockles and laverbread; the balcony stalls do bara brith and Welsh cakes off the griddle.
The Makers Guild in Wales runs a reassembled 1861 dockside warehouse frame as a selling gallery for around 60 Welsh makers — ceramics, silver, slate, textiles and lovespoon carving — with changing themed shows and weekend demonstrations.
Three floors on Cardiff's oldest street, named for the 12th-century Welsh lord who stormed the castle. Since 1983 the engine room of Welsh-language music, from Super Furry Animals to Adwaith, with two or three bands most nights.