To understand why St. David's is so special you have to know a little about the history of the area. St. David is the patron saint of Wales. According to legend, he was born around 500 A.D. at St Non's on the rugged coast of the St David's Peninsula. He was the founder of a strict monastic order in the little city that now bears his name and he was the most influential cleric in all Wales during the "Age of the Saints." His place of birth and the cathedral built in his name are among the most important shrines of medieval Christendom - two pilgrimages to St. David's were believed to have the same merit as one journey to Rome.

St David's Cathedral is one of the great historic shrines of Christendom. It is surrounded by the walls of the cathedral close and next to it there is a magnificent, if ruinous, Bishop's Palace. Nowhere in Britain is there a more ancient cathedral settlement for it reaches back fourteen centuries and survived the plunder of the Norsmen in the centuries before the Norman Conquest and then the chaos associated with the conquest itself. The purple-stoned cathedral (which has been modified and repaired many times) nestles inconspicuously in a grassy hollow beneath the rooftops of the tiny city -- a great contrast to the imposing and even intimidating structures of other cathedrals like Durham or Salisbury.

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