St David’s Day celebrated in Wales, the world and on Google!

Happy St David’s Day to you! If you’ve been online today, you may have noticed that the Google Doodle has acquired a castle. And a flag. And a dragon.

The search engine has again changed its famous icon – this time in recognition of Saint David’s Day, the feast of the patron saint of Wales. St David is believed to have died on that day in 589. A cathedral was built on the site of St David’s sixth century monastery in Pembrokeshire, which is today a very popular tourist attraction.

View Best of Wales’ holiday cottages in St. Davids, Pembrokeshire.

Today people all around the world with Welsh heritage will be marking the occasion.

There are events taking place all across Wales. Meanwhile Belgium, China, the US, India, Spain, Japan, Canada, Hong Kong and France have already held celebrations or will be staging festivities later on to mark the event.

The annual national St David’s Day Celebrations and Parade took place in Cardiff today and ended by the new St David’s shopping centre in the City Centre.

The city’s St David’s Hall will also host the St David’s Day Orchestral Concert with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Meanwhile Swansea needed more than one day to celebrate the event. The city’s St David’s Week, which began on February 22, will finish today.

Disney’s Mickey and Minnie will even turn Welsh on Friday to celebrate St David, believed to have lived for over a century, when the St David’s Welsh Festival at Disneyland Paris begins.

St David’s Day was declared a national day of celebration in Wales in the 18th century.

A Facebook ‘Ask Google to Recognise St David’s Day’ campaign was launched in 2008.