Cardiff: a kidnapped earl, a fairy-tale castle and coal millions

Cardiff grew from a small walled town by a river into the capital of Wales in barely a century and a half — and its streets keep the traces of Romans, Norman prisoners, Welsh rebels, coal kings and dreamers in stone. This quiz invites you to explore its history in 20 questions with pictures, for those who have lived in Cardiff all their lives as well as for visitors.

What does the city's name really mean, and which royal prisoner spent his last years in the castle? What did a Welsh lord of the hills do one night in 1158, whose statue in City Hall recalls the burning of the town, and what did an Elizabethan historian add after calling it the fairest town in Wales? How did the landscape gardeners of the 1770s get rid of an old castle wall, and how did the town rank at the census of 1801?

What did a nobleman in a tartan cloak build that made him «the creator of modern Cardiff», and what record was set on the floor of a trading hall in 1904? What was the cosmopolitan dockland called, what does the Welsh motto on a terracotta clock tower mean, and which polar ship sailed from here in 1910 under a Welsh flag? What lay under the feet of the smokers at the top of a tower, what grew on the slopes of a hillside castle, which architect from another city built a temple inside a ruined cathedral, which cathedral fared worse in the war, who was punished for a prank in a Llandaff sweet shop, why the town hall changed its name before it opened — and how a capital was made in 1955?

The pictures are old photochroms and photographs, engravings, paintings, portraits and a map, all in the public domain.