Where To Go in Manchester
27 places across 9 categories — the landmarks on the postcards, the observation decks, the museums, the parks, and the neighborhoods where the city actually lives.
Landmarks
TODO — what landmarks in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Manchester Town Hall
Waterhouse's Gothic town hall, the most confident building in the city, back after the longest restoration in its history.
John Rylands Library
A widow spent a cotton fortune on a cathedral for books. It is free, and it is the most beautiful room in Manchester.
Manchester Cathedral
The widest nave in England, medieval misericords with a dragon and a backgammon game, and two direct hits in one century.
Old Trafford and the Etihad
Two stadiums, two very different stories, and an honest account of what a tour gets you when there is no match on.
Beetham Tower and the Skyline
The tower that hums in the wind, the cluster that overtook it, and the awkward fact that Manchester has no proper viewing platform.
Museums
TODO — what museums in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Science and Industry Museum
Built on the oldest surviving passenger railway station in the world, and free.
Manchester Museum
Reopened in 2023 with a new South Asia gallery, a rebuilt Egypt display and 174 objects sent home.
Manchester Art Gallery
One of the great Pre-Raphaelite collections, free, and the site of the strangest art row of the last decade.
The Whitworth
A gallery that opens into a park, with the best textile collection outside London and Turner's watercolours.
National Football Museum
The national game's museum, in a glass wedge that was built for something else — and no longer free.
History
TODO — what history in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Castlefield and the Roman Fort
A rebuilt Roman gate, the world's first industrial canal basin, and a garden on a Victorian viaduct — all in one basin.
People's History Museum
The national museum of democracy, in a pump house, holding the largest collection of trade union banners in the world.
The Peterloo Memorial
Eighteen dead, hundreds injured, and two hundred years before the city built anything to mark it.
Parks & Outdoors
TODO — what parks & outdoors in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Food & Drink
TODO — what food & drink in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Mackie Mayor and the Food Halls
A ruined 1858 market hall turned into the best lunch in Manchester, with no bookings and long communal tables.
The Curry Mile
Famous for curry houses that have mostly gone. What is there now is Middle Eastern, and it is very good.
Manchester Pubs and the Marble Arch
A Victorian pub with a floor that slopes uphill on purpose, and the four or five others worth crossing the city for.
Culture & Music
TODO — what culture & music in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Aviva Studios
A £242 million arts building that came in at more than twice its budget, and is nonetheless the most ambitious venue built in Britain this century.
Bridgewater Hall and the Hallé
Britain's oldest professional symphony orchestra, in a concert hall that floats on two thousand tonnes of springs.
Victoria Baths
A 1906 water palace in stained glass and tilework, saved by a television vote and still, twenty years on, not a working pool.
Shopping
TODO — what shopping in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Day Trips
TODO — what day trips in Manchester are actually worth the time.
Neighbourhoods
TODO — what each part of Manchester is like to walk around, and who lives there.
The Northern Quarter
Record shops, murals, coffee and late licences in the streets the city forgot about for forty years.
Ancoats and New Islington
The world's first industrial suburb, then the worst slum in England, now the most expensive postcode in Manchester.