National Library of Wales

Stand still for a moment and feel the wind coming up the hill. It carries salt from the sea below, and the cry of gulls drifting over the rooftops of Aberystwyth. In front of you, a long pale stone building looks out across the town toward Cardigan Bay. Its columns catch the western light. Behind those doors sits one of the great collections of the written word in these islands — and much of it is in a language spoken by less than a million people.

This is the National Library of Wales. In Welsh, its name is Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru. It was founded by Royal Charter in 1907, during a period when Wales was building national institutions of its own. A national museum, a national university, and a national library were all part of the same push. The idea was simple. Welsh history, Welsh literature, and the Welsh language deserved a home inside Wales, not only in collections far away in London or Oxford.

Why here, in a small seaside town on the west coast, rather than in Cardiff? Aberystwyth made a strong case. It already had a university college, and it sat close to the Welsh-speaking heartlands of the west and north. There was also an important donor. Sir John Williams, a Welsh physician who had served the royal household, offered his large private collection of manuscripts and books. His support helped tip the decision toward this hillside above the bay.

Now look at the building itself. The design came from the architect Sidney Greenslade, who won a competition for the commission. King George the Fifth laid the foundation stone in 1911. The style is classical and calm — strong horizontal lines, tall columns, and pale stone that glows in sunshine and turns grey under cloud. Construction went on in stages over many decades. If you walk along the front, you may notice that the building feels both grand and quietly restrained.

Here is something many visitors miss. The library holds the right of legal deposit. That means a copy of almost every book published in Britain and Ireland can be claimed for its shelves. Only a handful of libraries share this right, including the British Library and the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. So this building is not only a Welsh archive. It is one of the main memory stores of printed culture across the whole of Britain.

The real treasures, though, are older and handwritten. Among them is the Black Book of Carmarthen. It is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts written entirely in Welsh, and it contains poetry, including verses connected to the figure of Myrddin — the Welsh origin of the wizard Merlin. Its name comes from the dark colour of its binding. The pages are small, and the handwriting is careful and dense.

Another treasure is the White Book of Rhydderch. This medieval manuscript holds one of the oldest versions of the tales now known as the Mabinogion. These are Welsh stories of magic, shapeshifting, and royal courts, and they rank among the oldest prose literature in Britain. When you hear about enchanted horses or a woman made from flowers, these stories are the source. They survived because scribes copied them by hand, page after page.

And here is the second surprise. One of the most important manuscripts of English literature also lives here. The Hengwrt Chaucer is an early copy of The Canterbury Tales, written not long after Geoffrey Chaucer died. Scholars study it closely because it may stand very near to the poet's own words. So, on this windy Welsh hill, you will find a key to the history of the English language as well as the Welsh one.

The library also carries a wartime story. During the Second World War, there were fears that bombing would destroy precious objects in London. A tunnel was dug into the hillside near the library, and treasures from major national collections were sent here for safety. Paintings and manuscripts waited out the war in the cool, dark rock of west Wales. The quiet town turned out to be one of the safest places in the country.

Today, the collections go far beyond books. The library looks after maps, photographs, paintings, letters, and sound and film. It is home to the national screen and sound archive of Wales, which keeps television programmes, films, and recordings of voices and music. The library has also put a great deal of material online, including historic Welsh newspapers. A family historian in Australia can search for a great-grandparent from home.

Inside, the atmosphere changes. Voices drop. Footsteps soften on the floors. The public exhibition spaces show rotating displays drawn from the collections, so what you see depends on when you visit. The reading rooms are a different world. There, researchers sit with manuscripts and old newspapers, turning pages slowly. To use them, you need to register for a reader's ticket. Even if you only look in, you can feel the concentration in the air.

Before you leave, turn around and look back down the hill. The town spreads out below, with its rooftops, its seafront, and the long curve of the bay. On a clear day, the coastline runs away into the distance. The founders chose this view on purpose. The library looks out over the country whose memory it keeps, and toward the sea that carried Welsh stories to other shores.

So take a last breath of that salt air. Notice the pale stone, the columns, and the quiet steps. Somewhere inside, a small dark book with seven-hundred-year-old poetry rests on a shelf, kept cool and safe. As you walk away down the hill, listen for the gulls, the wind, and perhaps a few words of Welsh in the street. That language, written on those pages long ago, is still spoken here today.