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Swansea ( SWON-zee; Welsh: Abertawe [abɛrˈtawɛ]) is a port and coastal city in Wales. It is the second-largest city in the country. The city forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea (Welsh: Dinas a Sir Abertawe).
The city is the twenty-eighth largest in the United Kingdom. Located along Swansea Bay in south-west Wales, with the principal area covering the Gower Peninsula, it is part of the Swansea Bay region and part of the historic county of Glamorgan and the ancient Welsh commote of Gŵyr.
The principal area is the second most populous local authority area in Wales, with an estimated population of 249,429 in 2025. At the 2021 census the population was 238,500, this was 0.2% lower than the population at the time of the 2011 census when it was 239,023. Swansea, along with Neath and Port Talbot, forms the Swansea urban area, with a population of 300,352 in 2011. It is also part of the Swansea Bay City Region.
During the 19th-century industrial heyday, Swansea was the key centre of the copper-smelting industry, earning the nickname Copperopolis.
The Welsh name, Abertawe, translates as "mouth or estuary of the Tawe" and was likely used as a name for the area before a settlement was established. The Welsh name Abertawe was first recorded with written records dating from 1150, under the spelling Aper Tyui.
Thomas Morgan notes that the original name of the town was Caer Wyr, meaning the "Caer" of Gower. and was the name used by the fifteenth century bard Lewis Glyn Cothi in reference to a great fortress that stood in the Swansea area, but was in ruins by his time.
The name Swansea first appears as Sweynesse in the town's first Royal charter (1158–1184), with alternative versions of this name found on coins minted around 1140. First appearing as "Sweynsei" in 1188 and "Sweineshie" in 1234, with different derivations gaining favour over the centuries. In 1722, the antiquarian Thomas Hearne stated that a "King Swanus" and his entire fleet were drowned at "Swenawick, alias Swanesey" a name he derived as "the sea of Swanus". The most prevalent theory was that the name derived from "swine sea", due to the large number of porpoises in Swansea Bay.
Today the English name is believed to be Old Norse in origin, with a popular etymology stating that it derives from a Viking personal name 'Svein' or 'Sweyn', with the suffix of '-ey' ("island"), referring either to a bank of the river at its mouth or to an area of raised ground in marshland. However, the Norse termination -ey can mean "inlet", and the name may simply refer to the mouth of the river. It is also commonly stated that the eponym of the city is in fact Sweyn Forkbeard (c. 960–1014).
The area around Swansea has a unique archaeological history dating back to the Palaeolithic. Finds at Long Hole Cave on the Gower Peninsula have been interpreted as those of the first modern humans in Britain, and the same area is also home to the oldest ceremonial burial in Western Europe, discovered at Paviland in 1823 and dated to 22,000 BC. The area also has many Bronze Age and Iron Age sites, such as the burial mound at Cillibion and the hill forts at Llwynheiernin and Cil Ifor. There are also the remains of a Roman villa also on the Gower peninsula.
The area that would become Swansea was known as the Cantref Eginog in ancient times, located on the eastern edge of the cwmwd (commote) of Gwyr, the easternmost cantref of Ystrad Tywi. This area was noted for its valuable land and was highly contested by the early Welsh kingdoms. During the Viking Age, the mouth of the Tawe became a focus for trade, and a trade post may have been founded sometime between the 9th and 11th centuries.
The settlement remained under Welsh control until the Norman invasion of Wales, when Iestyn ap Gwrgant ceded the settlement as part of the new Lordship of Gower to Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick in the early 1100s. The Lordship included land around Swansea Bay as far as the River Tawe, the manor of Kilvey beyond the Tawe, and the peninsula itself.
In the following years, Henry built Swansea Castle c. 1106, and minted coins bearing the names Swensi, Sweni and Svenshi c. 1140. Swansea was designated chief town of the lordship and received its first borough charter sometime between 1158 and 1184 from William de Newburgh, 3rd Earl of Warwick. This charter contains the earliest reference in English to Sweynesse and gave it the status of a borough, granting the townsmen (called burgesses) certain rights to develop the area. In 1215 King John granted a second charter, in which the name appears as Sweyneshe. A town seal which is believed to date from this period names the town as Sweyse. Another charter was granted in 1304.
From the early 1700s to the late 1800s, Swansea was the world's leading copper-smelting area. Numerous smelters along the River Tawe received copper and other metal ores shipped from Cornwall and Devon, as well as from North and South America, Africa, and Australia. The industry declined severely in the late 1800s, and none of the smelters are now active.
The port of Swansea initially traded in wine, hides, wool, cloth and later in coal. After the invention of the reverbatory furnace in the late 1600s, copper smelting could use coal rather than the more expensive charcoal. At the same time, the mines of Cornwall were increasing copper production. Swansea became the ideal place to smelt the Cornish copper ores, being close to the coalfields of South Wales and having an excellent port to receive ships carrying Cornish copper ore. Because each ton of copper ore smelted used about three tons of coal, it was more economical to ship the copper ore to Wales rather than sending the coal to Cornwall.
The first copper smelter at Swansea was established in 1717, followed by many more. Once smelting was established, the smelters began receiving high-grade ore and ore concentrates from around the world. More coal mines opened to meet demand from northeast Gower to Clyne and Llangyfelach. In the 1850s Swansea had more than 600 furnaces, and a fleet of 500 oceangoing ships carrying out Welsh coal and bringing back metal ore from around the world. At that time most of the copper matte produced in the United States was sent to Swansea for refining.
Smelters also processed arsenic, zinc, tin, and other metals. Nearby factories produced tinplate and pottery. The Swansea smelters became so adept at recovering gold and silver from complex ores that in the 1800s they received ore concentrates from the United States, for example from Arizona in the 1850s, and Colorado in the 1860s.
The city expanded rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was termed "Copperopolis". From the late 17th century to 1801, Swansea's population grew by 500%—the first official census (in 1841) indicated that, with 6,099 inhabitants, Swansea had become significantly larger than Glamorgan's county town, Cardiff, and was the second most populous town in Wales behind Merthyr Tydfil (which had a population of 7,705). However, the census understated Swansea's true size, as much of the built-up area lay outside the contemporary boundaries of the borough; the total population was actually 10,117. Swansea's population was later overtaken by Merthyr in 1821 and by Cardiff in 1881, although in the latter year Swansea once again surpassed Merthyr. Much of Swansea's growth was due to migration from within and beyond Wales—in 1881 more than a third of the borough's population had been born outside Swansea and Glamorgan, and just under a quarter outside Wales.
Through its copper industry Swansea established long-range connections with Chile, where businessmen like Charles Saint Lambert imported smelting technology from Swansea and also sent Chilean copper ore concentrate to Swansea for processing. Lambert's success in modernising the Chilean copper industry during the second quarter of the nineteenth century is thought to have sowed the seeds for the later demise of the copper smelting business in Swansea.
Copper smelting at Swansea declined in the late 1800s for a number of reasons: copper mining in Cornwall declined; the price of copper dropped from £112 in 1860 to £35 in the 1890s; in the early 1900s, mining shifted to lower-grade copper deposits in North and South America, and the lower-grade ore could not support transportation to Swansea. The Swansea and Mumbles Railway was built in 1804 to move limestone from the quarries of Mumbles and coal from the Clyne valley to Swansea and to the markets beyond. It carried the world's first fare-paying rail passengers on the same day the British Parliament abolished the transportation of slaves from Africa. It later moved from horse power to steam locomotion, and finally converting to electric trams, before closing in January 1960, in favour of motor buses.
Through the 20th century, heavy industries in the town declined, leaving the Lower Swansea Valley filled with derelict works and mounds of waste products from them. The Lower Swansea Valley Scheme (which still continues) reclaimed much of the land. The present Enterprise Zone was the result and, of the many original docks, only those outside the city continue to work as docks; North Dock is now Parc Tawe and South Dock became the Marina.
In the Second World War, Swansea's industrial importance made it a target of German bombing; much of the town centre was destroyed during the Swansea Blitz on the 19, 20 and 21 February 1941 (the Three Nights Blitz).)
In 1969, Swansea was granted city status to mark Prince Charles's investiture as the Prince of Wales. The Prince made the announcement on 3 July 1969 during a tour of Wales. Swansea obtained the further right to have a Lord Mayor in 1982.
Within the city centre are the ruins of the castle, the Marina, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea Museum, the Dylan Thomas Centre, the Environment Centre, and the Market, which is the largest covered market in Wales. It backs onto the Quadrant Shopping Centre, which opened in 1978, and the adjoining St David's Centre opened in 1982. Other notable modern buildings include the BT Tower (formerly the GPO tower) built around 1970, Alexandra House opened in 1976, County Hall opened in July 1982. Swansea Leisure Centre opened in 1977; it has undergone extensive refurbishment which retained elements of the original structure and re-opened in March 2008.
The City and County of Swansea local authority area is bordered by unitary authorities of Carmarthenshire to the north, and Neath Port Talbot to the east. The Urban Subdivision of Swansea covers all urbanised areas within the city boundary, with a population of 179,485, it is considerably smaller than the unitary authority.
The local government area is 378 square kilometres (146 sq mi) in size, about 2% of the area of Wales. It includes a large amount of open countryside and a central urban and suburban belt.
In 1887, Swansea was a township at the mouth of the river Tawe, covering 4,562 acres (1,846 hectares) in the county of Glamorgan. There were three major extensions to the boundaries of the borough: the first in 1835, when Morriston, St Thomas, Landore, St John-juxta-Swansea and part of Llansamlet parish were added; again in 1889, when areas around Cwmbwrla and Trewyddfa were included; and when the borough was enlarged in 1918 to include the whole of the ancient parish of Swansea, the southern part of Llangyfelach parish, all of Llansamlet parish, Oystermouth Urban District and Brynau parish.
In 1889, Swansea attained county borough status and it was granted city status in 1969, which was inherited by the Swansea district when it was formed by the merger of the borough and Gower Rural District in 1974. In 1996, Swansea became one of 22 unitary authorities with the addition of part of the former Lliw Valley Borough. The new authority received the name City and County of Swansea (Welsh: Dinas a Sir Abertawe).
Swansea was once a staunch stronghold of the Labour Party which, until 2004, had overall control of the council for 24 years. The Liberal Democrats were the largest group in the administration that took control of Swansea Council in the 2004 local elections until the 2012 council elections saw the council return to Labour control. For 2009/2010, the Lord Mayor of Swansea was Councillor Alan Lloyd, and in 2010/2011 Richard Lewis was the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor changes in May each year.
The Senedd constituencies, since 2026, are:
The UK Parliament constituencies covering Swansea and their MPs are:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Swansea”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.