Qualla: National Museum Cardiff https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:20 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: National Museum Cardiff https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff National Museum Cardiff: Introduction https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. For years, a painting in the galleries of National Museum Cardiff was catalogued as a copy. A pleasant enough Madonna, attributed to no one in particular, it hung without fanfare until 2019, when a BBC art detective noticed something the curators had missed: a preparatory sketch on the back that matched Botticelli's known methods. The painting was genuine, worth tens of millions, and it had been sitting in plain sight in Wales all along. This is the kind of place National Museum Cardiff is. Treasures hide in unlikely corners, and the building itself, a grand sweep of Portland stone in the civic heart of Cathays Park, contains multitudes that reward the patient visitor.

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]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/gcjs-national-museum-cardiff-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full National Museum Cardiff: A Museum Born Slowly https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff/ Photo credit Irid Escent, CC BY-SA 2.0. The National Museum of Wales was founded in 1905, its royal charter granted in 1907 as Cardiff staked its claim as a capital worthy of the name. Construction of the new building in Cathays Park began in 1912, designed by architects Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer in a confid...

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Image: Irid Escent | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/gcjs-national-museum-cardiff-a-museum-born-slowly.mp3 0:06 2 full National Museum Cardiff: The Davies Sisters' Gift https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff/ Photo credit Jeremy Segrott from Cardiff, Wales, UK, CC BY 2.0. The museum's art collection punches far above what you might expect from a regional gallery, and the reason has two names: Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. These granddaughters of a Welsh industrial magnate assembled one of the finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressi...

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Image: Jeremy Segrott from Cardiff, Wales, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/gcjs-national-museum-cardiff-the-davies-sisters-gift.mp3 0:06 3 full National Museum Cardiff: Seven and a Half Million Objects https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff/ Photo credit Lewis Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0. Beyond the art galleries, the museum holds collections of botany, geology, and zoology that number 7.5 million items. The Clore Discovery Centre, opened in 2011, lets visitors handle objects normally locked in storage: insects pinned in drawers, fossils from Welsh quarries, Bronz...

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Image: Lewis Clarke | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/gcjs-national-museum-cardiff-seven-and-a-half-million-objects.mp3 0:06 4 full National Museum Cardiff: Reckoning with Picton https://qualla.com/national-museum-cardiff/ Photo credit Verbcatcher, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement prompted reckonings with colonial history across Britain, attention turned to the museum's portrait of Sir Thomas Picton. The highest-ranking British officer to die at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Picton was long celebrated as a Wels...

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]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/s/national-museum-cardiff-wp/gcjs-national-museum-cardiff-reckoning-with-picton.mp3 0:06 5 full