It has direct access to the dualled A465 Heads of the Valleys trunk road and borders the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Y Domen Fawr is a Bronze Age burial cairn above the town and at Cefn Manmoel there is a demarcation dyke believed to be of neolithic or medieval origins.

[5] At its height (1930s—40s), the steelworks in Ebbw Vale was the largest in Europe, although it attracted very little attention from German bombers during World War II.

Largely as a result of the decline of the mining and steel industries, Ebbw Vale had one of the highest unemployment rates in the United Kingdom, but has been recovering.

[8] The Ebbw Vale conurbation today runs in an almost unbroken housing street plan 3 miles or so from Beaufort in the North to Cwm in the South.

[9] However, by 2021, the shopping park had fallen into disuse [10] and, in August 2021, it was sold to a real estate and investment company[11] which planned to redevelop the site into a "mixed use business centre".

[13] The Ebbw Vale Steelworks site known as "The Works"[14] has been re-developed with a £350 million regeneration project by Blaenau Gwent Council and Welsh Government using EU redevelopment funding.

It meets Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 and utilises construction techniques that allow Welsh softwood to be used in the fabric of the building.

The centre is located on an ecologically rich site next to the Pumphouse cooling ponds, which have become a haven for wildlife since the closure of the steelworks.

A brand-new modern extension (contrasting with the original building) officially opened on 24 October 2010 and houses the Gwent Archives.

The Queen officially opened the General Offices as part of her Diamond Jubilee Tour on 3 May 2012, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh.

[19] As part of the Cultural Olympiad for the London 2012 Olympics, Adain Avion,[20] a mobile art space created from the fuselage of a DC-9 aircraft, visited the General Offices between 1 and 7 July 2012.

Alongside this there is also the Ebbw Vale campus of Coleg Gwent, a Further Education college teaching a range of subjects from Mechanics, Media Studies, Humanities to Hairdressing and Beauty therapy.

A new Coleg Gwent building was opened in 2012 alongside Wales' first 3–16 educational establishment titled the Ebbw Fawr Learning Community, a £52m investment.

The town’s association with the game grew such that until the early 2000s Glamorgan County Cricket fixtures were regularly held at Eugene Park.

[citation needed] Beaufort Theatre, the largest in Blaenau Gwent, holds regular music, drama and other cultural events.

In 2009 the town centre underwent a great deal of improvements, including the addition of a major art work in the form of a 10.5-metre-high clock that cantilevers over the central boulevards.

[citation needed] By 2015 an 830 acre motor sport complex and technology park, the Circuit of Wales was in the advance planning stage with commitments from major investors.

To be located on moorland to the north of Ebbw Vale it was to host major motor bike racing events.

[citation needed] A fictionalised verison of the town was the setting for the 2024 BBC Three adult animated series The Golden Cobra created by locals Adam Llewellyn, James Prygodzicz and Thomas Rees.