"The most impressive interior of the building. It always surprised me that they didn't show this in the BBC Wales TV series The Bench which was set here in the Civic Centre. Roger Cucksey described the murals here as, 'one of the wonders of Wales', and they are probably the finest 20th Century mural decorations in a public building in Britain. (Frank Brangwyn's murals in Swansea's Brangwyn Hall are finer but they were not designed for the hall - the hall was adapted to fit the Empire paintings that were destined originally for The House Of Lords). These here were painted by a German artist Hans Freibusch, a long term collaborator with Clough Williams Ellis (there are many of his paintings in Portmerion). They took him 3 years to paint and the eleven panels represent the history of Newport from the first Celtic settlement to the 1964 opening of the George Street Bridge, (which you see in the corner here). The Civic centre building has not yet been listed but undoubtedly, Cadw willing, it will be in a few years time. Earlier in the series we were told that Carmarthen County Hall - another post war Civic building - had just been listed."
