CARDIFF, WALES — "This is how it used to be!" I overheard a teacher tell her young charges as they took turns entering a circa 1800 furnished farmhouse, excitedly clamoring to get the best view.

Children on field trips — wearing brightly colored raincoats and boots, with their ever-present backpacks—mingled with tourists like me strolling around St. Fagans National History Museum, known in Welsh as Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru, on a cool, cloudy day. Luckily the rain held off.

I've always enjoyed visiting these open-air museums that offer a great education about a country's history, culture, costumes, traditions, and lifestyle — both working and leisure. Some of my favorites have been Maihaugen in Lillehammer, Norway; Skansen in Stockholm, Sweden (the world's oldest); New Lanark, near Glasgow, Scotland; and Blists Hill and Beamish in the North of England. All great fun to sample the life of yesteryear.

And now here I was at St. Fagans, opened in 1948 and celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. It's not only one of Europe's most outstanding open-air museums, telling the story from Celtic times to the present day, but the most visited heritage attraction in Wales, with some 650,000 annual visitors.

Located in the South Wales area portrayed in "How Green Was My Valley" (of the famed book and Hollywood film) — in gorgeous emerald countryside just outside Cardiff — it covers more than 100 acres that includes the grounds of the late 16th century manor house known as St. Fagans Castle. It's a favorite tourist destination for foreigners as well as locals.

More than 40 buildings — which include a school, post office, bakery, store, chapel, even a medieval church — were relocated from various parts of the Wales countryside and reconstructed here, all depicting a period of Welsh life. There are also farmhouses — with huge fireplaces for warmth — where both poor and better-off families lived, furnished as though they had just stepped out.

Costumed guides on duty in the buildings and throughout the area answer any questions — and a guidebook and detailed signs give visitors additional information. It's easy to spend an entire day here soaking it all up.

I learned that the small, rural schoolhouse where Welsh children were taught from 1880 to 1916 was relocated here in 1984. The decor depicts how it would have been during the 1890s, when 20 students from ages 5 to 14 were taught in the one-room school. Today, when children visit on field trips, a costumed guide portraying "a stern Victorian teacher" reprimands them to sit quietly, explained my Blue Badge guide Bill O'Keefe.

"You should see the children's faces when they walk out!" he said with a smile, noting that it makes them have more appreciation for their modern-day teachers. In those days, he adds, children were punished for speaking Welsh instead of English. Today, learning Welsh is encouraged, and all road signs, for example, are in both languages.

The first farmhouse I toured was the two-story Kennixton, boasting a unique reddish color, said to protect it from evil spirits — or to show folk that the owners could afford to put pigment from local berries in the whitewash, whichever story you believe. The farmhouse, built in 1610, was moved here in 1955. Originally it had just a small parlor and loft; the living room was added in 1680 and the back kitchen in 1750. Today it is furnished as it would have been around 1800, when Leyshon Rogers, his wife and three children lived here with a maid and a farm laborer. They were considered to be pretty well off, and had nice, sturdy furniture, including a four-poster bed upstairs.

The tiny brick post office nearby, relocated here in 1993, is said to be the smallest freestanding post office in Wales. Constructed in 1936, it served a small, rural community. During that period post offices were important community centers and local hangouts for news and gossip. Mrs. Hannah Beatrice Griffiths, at one time the postmistress, sorted the mail and delivered it each morning by bicycle to the surrounding farms and cottages, covering a distance of about eight miles. Then in the afternoon she'd work at the pub and inn across the street. Villagers could press a P.O. button, ringing a bell to summon her if they needed to mail a package. During national emergencies — such as World War II, the period depicted here — the rural post offices were important communication centers, with War Department Receivers to relay urgent messages.

The "Gwalia" store on Main Street, owned by the William Llewellyn family in the early 1880s, was originally a grocery and bakery business, with the family living above the shop and in the house next door. Later, it was expanded to include an ironmongery, millinery and drapery. Later still, it held a boot shop that took over the neighboring buildings, which were moved here in 1988 and reopened to the public in 1991. Today, they depict how shopping would have been during the 1920s, shelves stocked with sample items from that era.

There's also a tollhouse furnished in the style of 1843, which was built in 1772, the year that access tolls opened in Wales to improve the poor road quality. Tollhouses were very unpopular with the citizens, and during 1839-43, the Rebecca Riots damaged many tollgates. Most were abolished in 1864 but a couple still survive. According to an old sign on display, those exempt from tolls included "Horses or carriages attending Her Majesty, or any of the Royal Family" — as well as funeral processions, and wagons "carrying manure for improving the lands" and "sheep going to be washed."

Visitors can also see a tailor shop, pigsty, flourmill, bee shelter, sawmill, pottery kiln, and tannery — even farm animals, a Celtic village, and ironworkers' houses.

A working bakery, which sells bread and cakes and gives visitors a whiff of fresh-baked goodies as they stroll by. Farmer Evan Jenkins built the building, formerly Derwen Bakehouse, in 1900 for his two daughters who toiled daily for nearly 25 years, from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Closed in 1924, it was relocated here in 1987. The early bakeries served as communal ovens, where housewives brought their prepared dough for baking. Later townsfolk brought meat to be cooked in the large, wood-fired ovens.

The Workmen's Institute, one of the most fascinating buildings, circa 1916, was painstakingly recreated here by local craftsmen beginning in 1989, a six-year project documented in a short film. It opened in 1995. Popular during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, the Workmen's Institutes provided educational, cultural, political, and social activities. They included libraries, reading rooms, cinemas, committee rooms, and concert halls. The institute buildings were used for political meetings, lectures, dances, miners' lodge meetings, and clubs, and were an important part of local society.

"St. Fagans tells the story of how the Welsh people lived — ordinary people, not the rich — how our ancestors lived," summed up guide O'Keefe.

IF YOU GO

St. Fagans National History Museum, about a two-hour train ride from London, is free and open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. every day, rain or shine. Allow a few hours to tour it and the indoor galleries. For more information, including various events and activities offered throughout the year, please visit www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/.

Sharon Whitley Larsen is a freelance travel writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.