Swansea is Wales’s second city and it sits along the top of its own bay, with five miles of sand running from the middle of town round to Mumbles. The promenade goes the whole way and it is flat, so most people walk or cycle part of it.
16 places to stay · showing 1–10
Swansea, Swansea & Gower
A working farm park near Swansea offering holiday cottages and B&B, with rare-breed animals and fishing lakes, sleeping up to 10.
Swansea, Swansea & Gower
A comfortable guest house in the Swansea Valley, with modern en-suite rooms and a jacuzzi — a relaxing base for the valley and beyond.
Swansea, South Wales
Spacious, luxurious self-catering apartments in Swansea with chic interiors, sleeping up to 6 — a stylish city base.
Swansea, South Wales
A comfortable, modern 4-star hotel in Swansea with en-suite rooms and some lovely views. Dog-friendly.
Swansea, South Wales
A 4-star hotel and spa near Swansea, set in its own beautiful grounds, blending traditional style with modern luxury.
Swansea, South Wales
A stylish modern hotel in Swansea with air-conditioned rooms, a spa and leisure club — a comfortable city base.
Swansea, South Wales
A distinctive 4-star boutique townhouse hotel in Swansea, with uniquely themed rooms — a characterful city base.
Swansea, South Wales
A modern, budget-friendly hotel in Swansea with bright, spacious rooms — great value for the city and the Gower. Dog-friendly.
Swansea, South Wales
A 4-star, air-conditioned hotel in Swansea with award-winning AA Rosette dining — a comfortable, central base.
Swansea, South Wales
A large detached house at Waunarlwydd near Swansea, sleeping 10 across five bedrooms, with a private hot tub and a games room, close to the Gower…
The middle of the city is compact. The market, the shops and Wind Street sit within a few minutes of each other, and the marina and the Maritime Quarter lie just below them on the front.
Behind it the ground rises into the Uplands and Sketty, and beyond those the lanes climb into farm country. West along the bay the Gower begins, so a city break and a coast week can be the same trip.
The poet Dylan Thomas called Swansea an ugly, lovely town, and both halves of that still hold. He was born up the hill in the Uplands, and you can go round the house on Cwmdonkin Drive if you book ahead.
The reason the centre looks the way it does is three nights in February 1941. On the 19th, 20th and 21st the Luftwaffe flattened forty-one acres of it, destroying eight hundred and fifty-seven buildings and damaging more than eleven thousand.
Two hundred and thirty people were killed. Ben Evans, a department store big enough to be called the Harrods of Wales, went overnight and never came back. Plans to rebuild the old street pattern were blocked from London, so the modern centre looks nothing like the Victorian one.
Swansea market survived all of that and is still the largest indoor market in Wales. It opens Monday to Saturday, eight until five, with more than a hundred stalls under one roof.
Cockles and laverbread reach those stalls from the Loughor estuary a few miles west. Joe’s on St Helen’s Road still sells the vanilla ice cream four generations of one family have made there, and the queue outside is a Swansea institution.
Down at the marina the National Waterfront Museum charges nothing and opens ten till five. Singleton Park and the Botanical Gardens sit a short way along the bay, and both are free to walk into.
The real argument for staying here is what sits within half an hour. Mumbles is at the end of the seafront, and past it the Gower, the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty ever named in the United Kingdom. Big sandy bays run all along its south coast.
Swansea is the practical base for this coast. The market, the marina and the museums in the middle, five miles of sand out to Mumbles, and the Gower beginning where the seafront ends. The real decision is whether to stay in the city or push out along the bay.
See all: Swansea & Gower accommodation
Browse Swansea & Gower by type: B&Bs & Guest Houses · Hotels & Inns · Cottages & Self-Catering · Caravan & Camping
Nearby towns: Mumbles · Port Eynon · Gower
Nearby areas: Carmarthenshire · Cardiff & the Vale of Glamorgan · South Wales
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