The best things to have happened to our brilliant capital city!

The Valleys had the raw materials – iron ore, coal and limestone – and Cardiff had the access to the sea to ship them across the world.

What was missing was the alchemy of transport.

The start of Cardiff’s transformation from a village into what would be dubbed Coal Metropolis Cardiff was the creation in 1794 of the Glamorganshire Canal which brought iron and coal down from the Valleys.

It may have become partially redundant as Cardiff’s future docks were developed, yet the start of Cardiff as a serious coal and iron exporting port arguably began with its creation.

It is just a shame that most of it is no longer with us today. The aristocratic Scots Bute family had held vast estates in south Wales since they came into the family through marriage in the mid 18th Century.

It was the dour but industrious John CrichtonStuart, the 2nd Marquess of Bute, who realised the potential they could have nearly a century later.

His determination to exploit the wealth of the coalfields by building the hugely expensive Cardiff docks – firstly with the Bute West Dock in 1839 – that turned Cardiff into a major coal port and drew people and wealth into the town that grew rapidly around them.

He was hailed at the time as “the creator of modern Cardiff ”.

His descendants would also go on to have a huge impact on the city through the vast wealth he left them, building not only further docks but much of the architecture the city treasures today.

His son, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, collaborated with William Burges to bequeath the city Cardiff Castle, Castell Coch and many other buildings around the city.

In 1947, the 5th Marquess of Bute gifted the castle and its grounds to the people of Cardiff and additional land was purchased from the Bute Estate to form the area we now know as Bute Park. Cardiff’s history is built on a rich melting pot of cultures.

The city’s Jewish community produced the Cardiffian poet Dannie Abse and his maverick lawyer Parliamentarian brother Leo.

In the literary world, Trezza Azzopardi was the daughter of a Welsh mum and Maltese dad whose work The Hiding Place was shortlisted for the Booker prize and Roald Dahl grew up here into a Norwegian family that worked in the shipping business.

Perhaps the most famous product of the melting pot that was Tiger Bay is Shirley Bassey . There are arguments for highlighting the impact of so many of the nationalities who settled in Cardiff.

But if there was one whose identity helped shape both the buildings, the nature and the soul of Kairdiff, it was the Irish.

There were so many Irish people in Cardiff that the suburb of Newtown was also known as