National Library of Wales

The National Library of Wales is an impressive book treasury located in Aberystwyth and keeps an unbeatable collection of works in Welsh.

The Welsh was a main language on the British Islands, however the Welsh today is not the same as the one that the Celts spread around 500 years BC. The Anglo-Saxons who arrived around the same time established their language as dominant and pushed the Welsh aside. They called the local population Wealh and thus the name of their language become known as Welsh.

The Welsh was revived after the 18^th century thanks to the Welsh patriotism and the need for a place to keep the pieces of Welsh literature arose. Cardiff and Aberystwyth competed to become the city where the library should be erected and at the end Aberystwyth was the chosen location. It won due to the fact that at the time the library was built, there was a larger Welsh speaking population there. The other advantage Aberystwyth had was that it already had an existing library with 25 000 books.  

The architect of the National Library of Wales is Sidney Kyffin Greenslade. An important detail about the building of the Welsh Library is the fact that each Welsh mine worker gave one shilling from their salary for its erection. The construction works continued for a few years and the building was fully completed in 1955 when the last sections designed by Sir Charles Holden were finished.

The collection in Welsh available at the National Library of Wales has no competition in this regard. The oldest manuscript to survive is the ‘The Black Book of Carmarthen’. Other important pieces of literature that can be found here are ‘The Book of Taliesin’, the earliest full text of ‘The Mabinogion’, the very first printed book from 1546 and the very first full Bible in Welsh.

The National Library of Wales also receives every single book published in Ireland and it can currently be proud with over four millions books, manuscripts, maps and photographs.