Newport Audioguides

Newport, or Casnewydd in Welsh, is a city on the River Usk in southeastern Wales that carries its industrial and radical history with a directness that more polished cities might lack. On 4 November 1839, thousands of Welsh workers marched on the Westgate Hotel in the centre of town in what became known as the Newport Rising, the last major armed insurrection in British history. The Chartists, who were demanding voting rights for working-class men, were met by soldiers and at least 22 people were killed. The bullet holes in the Westgate Hotel pillars, now a Grade II listed building, are still visible, and the Chartist story is told in the Newport Museum and Art Gallery.

Newport's Transporter Bridge, completed in 1906, is one of only eight surviving transporter bridges in the world and one of only two still in regular operation in the United Kingdom.

The bridge works by suspending a gondola from a high-level gantry that carries vehicles and pedestrians across the River Usk without disrupting river navigation. Riding across on the gondola, suspended over the tidal river on a steel carriage, is a singular experience. Just a couple of miles east along the Usk is Caerleon, a Roman fortress town where the legionary baths, amphitheatre, and barracks of the Second Augustan Legion are among the best-preserved Roman military remains in Britain.