It was built, in all its Edwardian Baroque glory, as the civic headquarters for a place that was not yet a city, never mind a capital. But the new fifth Cardiff Town Hall, its white facade of Portland stone designed to sparkle on even the greyest day, was a statement of intent when it opened in 1904. Wales, it proclaimed, exists. The building, its style somehow echoing that of the Beaux Arts capitols and assemblies of the new world, was the first structure in a whole civic centre complex called Cathays Park. Here was a national museum, courts, university, war memorial, police HQ and, eventually, the stripped classicist home of the Welsh Office and then the Welsh Government.