Manchester () is a city in

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the

Cheshire Plain The Cheshire Plain is a relatively flat expanse of lowland within the county of Cheshire in North West England but extending south into Shropshire. It extends from the Mersey Valley in the north to the Shropshire Hills in the south, bounded b ...

to the south, the

Pennines The Pennines (), also known as the Pennine Chain or Pennine Hills, are a range of uplands running between three regions of Northern England: North West England on the west, North East England and Yorkshire and the Humber on the east. Common ...

to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous

conurbation A conurbation is a region comprising a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most cas ...

s, the

Greater Manchester Built-up Area The Greater Manchester Built-up Area is an area of land defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), consisting of the large conurbation that encompasses the urban element of the city of Manchester and the metropolitan area that forms ...

, which has a population of 2.87 million. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

fort (''

castra In the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, the Latin word ''castrum'', plural ''castra'', was a military-related term. In Latin usage, the singular form ''castrum'' meant 'fort', while the plural form ''castra'' meant 'camp'. The singular a ...

'') of ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell.

Historically History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

part of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancas ...

, areas of

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county tow ...

south of the

River Mersey The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed par ...

were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including

Wythenshawe Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s. With an area of approx ...

in 1931. Throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

Manchester remained a manorial

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, ...

, but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in

textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron found ...

, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.
•
• Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The

Manchester Ship Canal The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the ri ...

opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the C ...

, to the west. Its fortune declined after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, owing to deindustrialisation, and the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the

2002 Commonwealth Games The 2002 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XVII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Manchester 2002 were held in Manchester, England, from 25 July to 4 August, 2002. The 2002 Games were to be hosted in the United Kingdom to coin ...

. The city is notable for its architecture,

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output,

social impact Social impact may refer to: * Social impact assessment * Social impact theory Social impact theory was created by Bibb Latané in 1981 and consists of four basic rules which consider how individuals can be "sources or targets of social influence ...

, sports clubs and transport connections.

Manchester Liverpool Road railway station Liverpool Road is a former railway station on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Manchester, England that opened on 15 September 1830. The station was the Manchester terminus of the world's first inter-city passenger railway in which all ...

was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station. At the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' considers him to be the greatest ...

first split the atom in 1917, Frederic C. Williams,

Tom Kilburn Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With ...

and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first

stored-program computer A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms. The definition ...

in 1948, and

Andre Geim , birth_date = , birth_place = Sochi, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union , death_date = , death_place = , workplaces = , nationality = Dutch and British , fields = Condensed matter physics , ...

and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first

graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

in 2004.

Etymology

The name ''Manchester'' originates from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

name ''Mamucium'' or its variant ''Mancunio'' and the citizens are still referred to as Mancunians (). These names are generally thought to represent a Latinisation of an original Brittonic

name A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A persona ...

. The generally accepted etymology of this name is that it comes from Brittonic *''mamm-'' ("

breast The breast is one of two prominences located on the upper ventral region of a primate's torso. Both females and males develop breasts from the same embryological tissues. In females, it serves as the mammary gland, which produces and sec ...

", in reference to a " breast-like hill").''The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society'', ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), under ''MANCHESTER''. However, more recent work suggests that it could come from *''mamma'' ("mother", in reference to a local river

goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes ...

). Both usages are preserved in

Insular Celtic languages Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany ...

, such as ''mam'' meaning "breast" in Irish and "mother" in Welsh. The

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

'' -chester'' is from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

''ceaster'' ("Roman fortification", itself a loanword from Latin ''castra'', "fort; fortified town").

History

Early history

The

Brigantes The Brigantes were Ancient Britons who in pre-Roman times controlled the largest section of what would become Northern England. Their territory, often referred to as Brigantia, was centred in what was later known as Yorkshire. The Greek geog ...

were the major Celtic tribe in what is now known as

Northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angles, Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Scandinavian York, K ...

; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which

Manchester Cathedral Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, seat of the Bishop of Manchester and the ...

now stands, opposite the bank of the

River Irwell The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary b ...

. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now

and

Stretford Stretford is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is situated on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, south of Manchester city centre, south of Salford and north-east of Altrincham. S ...

. Following the

Roman conquest of Britain The Roman conquest of Britain refers to the conquest of the island of Britain by occupying Roman forces. It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain by 87 when the Stan ...

in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a

fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

named

Mamucium Mamucium, also known as Mancunium, is a former Roman fort in the Castlefield area of Manchester in North West England. The ''castrum'', which was founded c. AD 79 within the Roman province of Roman Britain, was garrisoned by a cohort ...

in the year 79 to ensure that Roman interests in

Deva Victrix Deva Victrix, or simply Deva, was a legionary fortress and town in the Roman province of Britannia on the site of the modern city of Chester. The fortress was built by the Legio II ''Adiutrix'' in the 70s AD as the Roman army advanced north ag ...

(

Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...

) and

Eboracum Eboracum () was a fort and later a city in the Roman province of Britannia. In its prime it was the largest town in northern Britain and a provincial capital. The site remained occupied after the decline of the Western Roman Empire and ultimat ...

(

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

) were protected from the Brigantes. Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time. A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in

Castlefield Castlefield is an inner-city conservation area in Manchester, North West England. The conservation area which bears its name is bounded by the River Irwell, Quay Street, Deansgate and Chester Road. It was the site of the Roman era fort of Mam ...

. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell and

Irk The River Irk is a river in the historic county of Lancashire in the North West England that flows through the northern most Lancastrian towns of the ceremonial county of Greater Manchester. It rises to the east of Royton and runs west pas ...

sometime before the arrival of the Normans after 1066. Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent

Harrying of the North The Harrying of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–1070 to subjugate northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo- Danish re ...

In the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086, Manchester is recorded as within the

hundred of Salford The Salford Hundred (also known as Salfordshire) was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire, in Northern England (see:Hundred (county division). Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford (the s ...

and held as

tenant in chief In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as oppo ...

by a Norman named Roger of Poitou, later being held by the family of Grelley,

lord of the manor Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...

and residents of

Manchester Castle Manchester Castle was a medieval fortified manor house, probably located on a bluff where the rivers Irk and Irwell meet, near to Manchester Cathedral, where Chetham's School of Music now is,Newman (2006), p. 141. putting it near the edge ...

until 1215 before a Manor House was built. By 1421 Thomas de la Warre founded and constructed a

collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons: a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by ...

for the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

, now

; the domestic premises of the college house Chetham's School of Music and

Chetham's Library Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, is the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world.Nicholls (2004), p. 20. Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in ...

. The library, which opened in 1653 and is still open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom. Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry. Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of

wool Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. ...

lens and

linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...

, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in John Leland's words, "The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire." The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland's Manchester. During the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I (" Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of r ...

Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long-lasting,

Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...

granted it the right to elect its own MP.

Charles Worsley Charles Worsley (24 June 1622 – 12 June 1656) was an English soldier and politician. He was an ardent supporter of Oliver Cromwell and was an officer in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth of England. ...

, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the

Rule of the Major Generals The Rule of the Major-Generals, was a period of direct military government from August 1655 to January 1657, during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. England and Wales were divided into ten regions, each governed by a major-general who answered to th ...

. He was a diligent

puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656. Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen/cotton

fustian Fustian is a variety of heavy cloth woven from cotton, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used figuratively to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is b ...

s, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance. The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The

Bridgewater Canal The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was opened in 1761 from Wo ...

, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at

Runcorn Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port in the Borough of Halton in Cheshire, England. Its population in 2011 was 61,789. The town is in the southeast of the Liverpool City Region, with Liverpool to the northwest across the River Mersey. ...

by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton. Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns. A

commodities exchange A commodities exchange is an exchange, or market, where various commodities are traded. Most commodity markets around the world trade in agricultural products and other raw materials (like wheat, barley, sugar, maize, cotton, cocoa, coffee, m ...

, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780,

Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as ...

began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill. In the early 1800s,

John Dalton John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into Color blindness, colour blindness, which ...

formulated his atomic theory in Manchester.

Industrial Revolution

Manchester was one of the centres of

. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing. Manchester became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods and was dubbed "

Cottonopolis Cottonopolis was a 19th-century nickname for Manchester, as it was a metropolis and the centre of the cotton industry. Background Early cotton mills powered by water were built in Lancashire and its neighbouring counties. In 1781 Richard Arkw ...

" and "Warehouse City" during the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwa ...

. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term "manchester" is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc. The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester's population. Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world." Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway—the

Liverpool and Manchester Railway The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively ...

. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down. In 1878 the GPO (the forerunner of

British Telecom BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, b ...

) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester. The

was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running from

to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at

Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the l ...

. Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world. A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the

Peterloo massacre The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliament ...

of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester Capitalism developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the

Anti-Corn Law League The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a tim ...

from 1838 onward. Manchester has a notable place in the history of

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

and left-wing politics; being the subject of

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844''; Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet. The first

Trades Union Congress The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in England and Wales, representing the majority of trade unions. There are 48 affiliated unions, with a total of about 5.5 million members. Frances ...

was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was an important cradle of the Labour Party and the

Suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to member ...

Movement. At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the Manchester School, promoting

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econ ...

and ''

laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...

''), new classes or groups in society, new religious sects, and new forms of labour organisation. It attracted educated visitors from all parts of Britain and Europe. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: "What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow."
•
• Manchester's golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the 19th century. Many of the great public buildings (including

Manchester Town Hall Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments. The building faces Albert Square to ...

) date from then. The city's cosmopolitan atmosphere contributed to a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a

county borough County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent te ...

with even greater autonomy. Oxford Road, Manchester 1910, Valette

Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian

Simon Schama Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He fi ...

noted that "Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke". An American visitor taken to Manchester's blackspots saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments". The number of

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven b ...

s in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853. Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by

Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish weavers settled in the area in the 14th ...

in the 1850s and

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, w ...

in the 1860s. However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region. Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in the area. The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.

Blitz

Like most of the UK, the Manchester area was mobilised extensively during the

. For example, casting and machining expertise at

Beyer, Peacock & Company Beyer, Peacock and Company was an English railway locomotive manufacturer with a factory in Openshaw, Manchester. Founded by Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock and Henry Robertson, it traded from 1854 until 1966. The company exported locomotives, ...

's locomotive works in Gorton was switched to bomb making; Dunlop's rubber works in

Chorlton-on-Medlock Chorlton-on-Medlock or Chorlton-upon-Medlock is an inner city area of Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, Chorlton-on-Medlock is bordered to the north by the River Medlock, which runs immediately south of Manchester city centre ...

made

barrage balloon A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barra ...

s; and just outside the city in

, engineers

Metropolitan-Vickers Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial el ...

made

Avro Manchester The Avro 679 Manchester was a British twin-engine heavy bomber developed and manufactured by the Avro aircraft company in the United Kingdom. While not being built in great numbers, it was the forerunner of the famed and vastly more successful ...

and

Avro Lancaster The Avro Lancaster is a British Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the Short Stir ...

bombers and Ford built the

Rolls-Royce Merlin The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British liquid-cooled V-12 piston aero engine of 27-litres (1,650 cu in) capacity. Rolls-Royce designed the engine and first ran it in 1933 as a private venture. Initially known as the PV-12, it was late ...

engines to power them. Manchester was thus the target of bombing by the

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German '' Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the '' Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabt ...

, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets. The biggest took place during the Christmas Blitz on the nights of 22/23 and 24 December 1940, when an estimated of high explosives plus over 37,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. A large part of the historic city centre was destroyed, including 165 warehouses, 200 business premises, and 150 offices. 376 were killed and 30,000 houses were damaged.

, Royal Exchange and Free Trade Hall were among the buildings seriously damaged; restoration of the cathedral took 20 years.

Post-Second World War

Cotton processing and trading continued to fall in peacetime, and the exchange closed in 1968. By 1963 the port of Manchester was the UK's third largest,
• and employed over 3,000 men, but the canal was unable to handle the increasingly large

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

ships. Traffic declined, and the port closed in 1982. Heavy industry suffered a downturn from the 1960s and was greatly reduced under the economic policies followed by

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

's government after 1979. Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1961 and 1983. Regeneration began in the late 1980s, with initiatives such as the Metrolink, the Bridgewater Concert Hall, the

Manchester Arena Manchester Arena, currently referred to as the AO Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor arena in Manchester, England, immediately north of the city centre and partly above Manchester Victoria station in air rights space. The arena has the ...

, and (in Salford) the rebranding of the port as

Salford Quays Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom fol ...

. Two bids to host the Olympic Games were part of a process to raise the international profile of the city. Oxfordrd

Manchester has a history of attacks attributed to Irish Republicans, including the Manchester Martyrs of 1867, arson in 1920, a series of explosions in 1939, and two bombs in 1992. On Saturday 15 June 1996, the

Provisional Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reu ...

(IRA) carried out the 1996 Manchester bombing, the detonation of a large bomb next to a department store in the city centre. The largest to be detonated on British soil, the bomb injured over 200 people, heavily damaged nearby buildings, and broke windows away. The cost of the immediate damage was initially estimated at £50 million, but this was quickly revised upwards. The final insurance payout was over £400 million; many affected businesses never recovered from the loss of trade.

Since 2000

Spurred by the investment after the 1996 bomb and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, the city centre has undergone extensive regeneration.

New and renovated complexes such as The Printworks and Corn Exchange have become popular shopping, eating and entertainment areas. Manchester Arndale is the UK's largest city-centre shopping centre. Large city sections from the 1960s have been demolished, re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel. Old mills have been converted into apartments.

Hulme Hulme () is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage. Historically in Lancashire, the name Hulme is derived from the Old Norse word ...

has undergone extensive regeneration, with million-pound loft-house apartments being developed. The 47-storey, Beetham Tower was the tallest UK building outside of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and the highest residential accommodation in Europe when completed in 2006. It was surpassed in 2018 by the South Tower of the

Deansgate Square Deansgate Square, formerly known as Owen Street, is a skyscraper cluster on the southern edge of Manchester City Centre, consisting of four towers, the tallest of which is 201 metres (659 feet). The site is just south of Deansgate railway statio ...

project, also in Manchester. In January 2007, the independent Casino Advisory Panel licensed Manchester to build the UK's only

supercasino In the United Kingdom, a regional casino (super casino or mega casino) was the largest category of casino permitted under law – equivalent in size to the larger casinos in Las Vegas. The first regional casino was proposed in 2007 for Manchester ...

, but plans were abandoned in February 2008. On 22 May 2017, an

Islamist terrorist Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists. Incidents and fatalities f ...

carried out a bombing at an

Ariana Grande Ariana Grande-Butera ( ; born June 26, 1993) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her four-octave vocal range has received critical acclaim, and her personal life has been the subject of widespread media attention. She has received ...

concert in the

; the bomb killed 23, including the attacker, and injured over 800. It was the deadliest terrorist attack and first suicide bombing in Britain since the

7 July 2005 London bombings The 7 July 2005 London bombings, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists in London that targeted commuters travelling on the city's public transport system during the mo ...

. It caused worldwide condemnation and changed the UK's threat level to "critical" for the first time since 2007. Birmingham has historically been considered to be England or the UK's second city, but in the 21st century claims to this unofficial title have also been made for Manchester.

Government

The City of Manchester is governed by the

Manchester City Council Manchester City Council is the local authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester is the sixth largest city in England by population. Its city council is composed of 96 councillors, three f ...

. The

Greater Manchester Combined Authority The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is a combined authority for Greater Manchester, England. It was established on 1 April 2011 and consists of 11 members; 10 indirectly elected members, each a directly elected councillor from one ...

, with a directly elected mayor, has responsibilities for economic strategy and transport, amongst other areas, on a Greater Manchester-wide basis. Manchester has been a member of the English

Core Cities Group The Core Cities Group (also Core Cities UK) is a self-selected and self-financed collaborative advocacy group of large regional cities in the United Kingdom outside Greater London. The group was formed in 1995 and serves as a partnership of el ...

since its inception in 1995. The town of Manchester was granted a charter by Thomas Grelley in 1301, but lost its

borough status Borough status is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district. In Scotland, ...

in a court case of 1359. Until the 19th century local government was largely in the hands of

manorial court The manorial courts were the lowest courts of law in England during the feudal period. They had a civil jurisdiction limited both in subject matter and geography. They dealt with matters over which the lord of the manor had jurisdiction, primaril ...

s, the last of which was dissolved in 1846. From a very early time, the

township of Manchester A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, ...

lay within the historic or ceremonial county boundaries of

. Pevsner wrote "That eighbouring

and

are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England". A stroke of a baron's pen is said to have divorced Manchester and Salford, though it was not Salford that became separated from Manchester, it was Manchester, with its humbler line of lords, that was separated from Salford. It was this separation that resulted in Salford becoming the judicial seat of

Salfordshire The Salford Hundred (also known as Salfordshire) was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire, in Northern England (see:Hundred (county division). Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford (the s ...

, which included the ancient parish of Manchester. Manchester later formed its own Poor Law Union using the name "Manchester". In 1792, Commissioners – usually known as "Police Commissioners" – were established for the social improvement of Manchester. Manchester regained its borough status in 1838, and comprised the townships of Beswick,

Cheetham Hill Cheetham is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, which in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, north of Manchester city centre, close to the boundary with Salford, bounded by Broug ...

, Chorlton upon Medlock and

. By 1846, with increasing population and greater industrialisation, the Borough Council had taken over the powers of the "Police Commissioners". In 1853, Manchester was granted city status. In 1885,

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

, Harpurhey,

Rusholme Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, England, two miles south of the city centre. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, F ...

and parts of

Moss Side Moss Side is an inner-city area of Manchester, England, south of the city centre, It had a population of 20,745 at the 2021 census. Moss Side is bounded by Hulme to the north, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Rusholme and Fallowfield to the east, W ...

and Withington townships became part of the City of Manchester. In 1889, the city became a

, as did many larger Lancashire towns, and therefore not governed by

Lancashire County Council Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. It consists of 84 councillors. Since the 2017 election, the council has been under Conservative control. Prior to the 2009 L ...

. Between 1890 and 1933, more areas were added to the city, which had been administered by Lancashire County Council, including former villages such as

Burnage Burnage is a suburb of the city of Manchester in North West England, about south of Manchester city centre and bisected by the dual carriageway of Kingsway. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, the population of th ...

Chorlton-cum-Hardy Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of Manchester, England, southwest of the city centre. Chorlton ward had a population of 14,138 at the 2011 census, and Chorlton Park 15,147. By the 9th century, there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement her ...

Didsbury Didsbury is a suburban area of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 26,788. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, there are ...

Fallowfield Fallowfield is a suburb of Manchester, England, with a population at the 2011 census of 15,211. Historically in Lancashire, it lies south of Manchester city centre and is bisected east–west by Wilmslow Road and north–south by Wil ...

, Levenshulme, Longsight, and Withington. In 1931, the

civil parishes of

Baguley Baguley ( ) is an electoral ward of the city of Manchester in Wythenshawe, England. The population at the 2011 census was 14,794. Baguley is derived from the Old English words Bagca, badger, and Leah, clearing or meadow. Historically in Cheshi ...

, Northenden and

Northen Etchells Northen Etchells was a township in Cheshire, England. "Northen" is an old name for Northenden and "Etchells" came from Anglo-Saxon ''ēcels'' = "land added to an estate". Geography Northen Etchells covered the rural area that includes much of m ...

from the south of the

were added. In 1974, by way of the

Local Government Act 1972 The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant Acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...

, the City of Manchester became a metropolitan district of the

metropolitan county The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, with populations between 1 and 3 million. They were created in 1974 and are each di ...

. That year, Ringway, the village where the

Manchester Airport Manchester Airport is an international airport in Ringway, Manchester, England, south-west of Manchester city centre. In 2019, it was the third busiest airport in the United Kingdom in terms of passenger numbers and the busiest of those ...

is located, was added to the city. In November 2014, it was announced that Greater Manchester would receive a new directly elected mayor. The mayor would have fiscal control over health, transport, housing and police in the area.

Andy Burnham Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 200 ...

was elected as the first mayor of Greater Manchester in

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

Geography

At , northwest of London, Manchester lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by the

, an upland chain that runs the length of

northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angles, Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Scandinavian York, K ...

, and to the south by the

. Manchester is north-east of

Liverpool Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...

and north-west of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire ...

, making the city the halfway point between the two. The

city centre A city centre is the commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart of a city. The term "city centre" is primarily used in British English, and closely equivalent terms exist in other languages, such as "" in Fren ...

is on the east bank of the

, near its confluences with the Rivers Medlock and

, and is relatively low-lying, being between above sea level. The

flows through the south of Manchester. Much of the inner city, especially in the south, is flat, offering extensive views from many highrise buildings in the city of the foothills and moors of the Pennines, which can often be capped with snow in the winter months. Manchester's geographic features were highly influential in its early development as the world's first industrial city. These features are its climate, its proximity to a

seaport A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as ...

, the availability of water power from its rivers, and its nearby coal reserves. Map of Manchester

The name Manchester, though officially applied only to the metropolitan district within Greater Manchester, has been applied to other, wider divisions of land, particularly across much of the Greater Manchester county and urban area. The "Manchester City Zone", " Manchester post town" and the " Manchester Congestion Charge" are all examples of this. For purposes of the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; cy, Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible for ...

, Manchester forms the most populous settlement within the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's third-largest conurbation. There is a mix of high-density urban and suburban locations. The largest open space in the city, at around , is

Heaton Park Heaton Park is a public park in Manchester, England, covering an area of over . The park includes the grounds of a Grade I listed, neoclassical 18th century country house, Heaton Hall. The hall, remodelled by James Wyatt in 1772, is now only ...

. Manchester is contiguous on all sides with several large settlements, except for a small section along its southern boundary with

. The M60 and

M56 motorway The M56 motorway, also known as the North Cheshire motorway, serves the Cheshire and Greater Manchester areas of England. It runs east to west from junction 4 of the M60 at Gatley, south of Manchester, to Dunkirk, approximately north of Ches ...

s pass through Northenden and

respectively in the south of Manchester. Heavy rail lines enter the city from all directions, the principal destination being

Manchester Piccadilly station Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. Opened as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and became Manchester Piccadilly in 1960. Located to the south-east of Manchester cit ...

Climate

Manchester experiences a

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

oceanic climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ...

( Köppen: ''Cfb''), like much of the British Isles, with warm summers and cool winters. Summer daytime temperatures regularly top 20°C, quite often reaching 25°C on sunny days during July and August in particular. In more recent years, temperatures have occasionally reached over 30°C. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The city's average annual rainfall is compared to a UK average of , and its mean rain days are 140.4 per annum, compared to the UK average of 154.4. Manchester has a relatively high humidity level, and this, along with abundant soft water, was one factor that led to advancement of the textile industry in the area. Snowfalls are not common in the city because of the urban warming effect but the

West Pennine Moors The West Pennine Moors is an area of the Pennines covering approximately of moorland and reservoirs in Lancashire and Greater Manchester, England. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The West Pennine Moors are separated from the mai ...

to the north-west,

South Pennines The South Pennines is a region of moorland and hill country in northern England lying towards the southern end of the Pennines. In the west it includes the Rossendale Valley and the West Pennine Moors. It is bounded by the Greater Manchester ...

to the north-east and

Peak District The Peak District is an Highland, upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It includes the Dark Peak, whe ...

to the east receive more snow, which can close roads leading out of the city. They include the A62 via

and

Standedge Standedge () is a moorland escarpment in the Pennine Hills of northern England between Marsden, West Yorkshire and Diggle, Greater Manchester. Standedge has been a major moorland crossing point since Roman times and possibly earlier. From east ...

, the A57,

Snake Pass Snake Pass is a hill pass in the Derbyshire section of the Peak District, crossing the Pennines between Glossop and the Ladybower Reservoir at Ashopton. The road was engineered by Thomas Telford and opened in 1821. The pass carries the ...

, towards

, and the Pennine section of the M62. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Manchester was on 7 January 2010.

Green belt

Manchester lies at the centre of a

green belt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which h ...

region extending into the wider surrounding counties. This reduces

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growt ...

, prevents towns in the conurbation from further convergence, protects the identity of outlying communities, and preserves nearby countryside. It is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building. Due to being already highly urban, the city contains limited portions of protected green-belt area within

greenfield Greenfield or Greenfields may refer to: Engineering and Business * Greenfield agreement, an employment agreement for a new organisation * Greenfield investment, the investment in a structure in an area where no previous facilities exist * Greenf ...

throughout the borough, with minimal development opportunities, at Clayton Vale,

, Chorlton Water Park along with the Chorlton Ees & Ivy Green nature reserve and the floodplain surrounding the River Mersey, as well as the southern area around Manchester Airport. The green belt was first drawn up in 1961.

Demographics

Historically the population of Manchester began to increase rapidly during the

, estimated at 354,930 for Manchester and 110,833 for Salford in 1865, and peaking at 766,311 in 1931. From then the population began to decrease rapidly, due to

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

and the increased building of

social housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, d ...

overspill estates by Manchester City Council after the Second World War such as Hattersley and Langley. The 2012 mid-year estimate for the population of Manchester was 510,700. This was an increase of 7,900, or 1.6 per cent, since the 2011 estimate. Since 2001, the population has grown by 87,900, or 20.8 per cent, making Manchester the third fastest-growing area in the 2011 census. The city experienced the greatest percentage population growth outside London, with an increase of 19 per cent to over 500,000. Manchester's population is projected to reach 532,200 by 2021, an increase of 5.8 per cent from 2011. This represents a slower rate of growth than the previous decade. The

in 2011 had an estimated population of 2,553,400. In 2012 an estimated 2,702,200 people lived in

. An 6,547,000 people were estimated in 2012 to live within of Manchester and 11,694,000 within . Between the beginning of July 2011 and end of June 2012 (mid-year estimate date), births exceeded deaths by 4,800. Migration (internal and international) and other changes accounted for a net increase of 3,100 people between July 2011 and June 2012. Compared with Greater Manchester and with England, Manchester has a younger population, with a particularly large 20–35 age group. There were 76,095 undergraduate and postgraduate students at

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...

, the

and

Royal Northern College of Music The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is a conservatoire located in Manchester, England. It is one of four conservatoires associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. In addition to being a centre of music education ...

in the 2011/2012 academic year. Of all households in Manchester, 0.23 per cent were Same-Sex

Civil Partnership A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage ...

households, compared with an English national average of 0.16 per cent in 2011. The Manchester

Larger Urban Zone The larger urban zone (LUZ), or functional urban area (FUA), is a measure of the population and expanse of metropolitan and surrounding areas which may or may not be exclusively urban. It consists of a city and its commuting zone outside it. The ...

, a

Eurostat Eurostat ('European Statistical Office'; DG ESTAT) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission located in the Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide stati ...

measure of the functional city-region approximated to local government districts, had a population of 2,539,100 in 2004. In addition to Manchester itself, the LUZ includes the remainder of the county of

. The Manchester LUZ is the second largest within the United Kingdom, behind that of London.

Religion

Since the 2001 census, the proportion of Christians in Manchester has fallen by 22 per cent from 62.4 per cent to 48.7 per cent in 2011. The proportion of those with no religious affiliation rose by 58.1 per cent from 16 per cent to 25.3 per cent, whilst the proportion of Muslims increased by 73.6 per cent from 9.1 per cent to 15.8 per cent. The size of the Jewish population in Greater Manchester is the largest in Britain outside London.

Ethnicity

In terms of ethnic composition, the City of Manchester has the highest non-white proportion of any district in Greater Manchester. Statistics from the 2011 census showed that 66.7 per cent of the population was

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...

(59.3 per cent

White British White British is an ethnicity classification used for the native white population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British in the United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White British population wa ...

, 2.4 per cent

White Irish } White Irish is an ethnicity classification used in the 2011 United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White Irish population was 1,105,673 or 1.7% of the UK total population. This total includes the White Irish population estimate for ...

, 0.1 per cent Gypsy or

Irish Traveller Irish Travellers ( ga, an lucht siúil, meaning "the walking people"), also known as Pavees or Mincéirs (Shelta: Mincéirí), are a traditionally peripatetic indigenous ethno-cultural group in Ireland.''Questioning Gypsy identity: ethnic na ...

, 4.9 per cent

Other White The term Other White is a classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom and has been used in documents such as the 2011 UK Census to describe people who self-identify as white (chiefly European) persons who are not of the English, Welsh, ...

– although the size of mixed European and British ethnic groups is unclear, there are reportedly over 25,000 people in Greater Manchester of at least partial

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

descent alone, which represents 5.5 per cent of the population of Greater Manchester). 4.7 per cent were

mixed race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...

(1.8 per cent White and Black Caribbean, 0.9 per cent White and Black African, 1.0 per cent White and Asian, 1.0 per cent other mixed), 17.1 per cent Asian (2.3 per cent

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

, 8.5 per cent Pakistani, 1.3 per cent

Bangladeshi Bangladeshis ( bn, বাংলাদেশী ) are the citizens of Bangladesh, a South Asian country centered on the transnational historical region of Bengal along the eponymous bay. Bangladeshi citizenship was formed in 1971, when the ...

, 2.7 per cent Chinese, 2.3 per cent other Asian), 8.6 per cent

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

(5.1 per cent African, 1.6 per cent

other Black A number of different systems of classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom exist. These schemata have been the subject of debate, including about the nature of ethnicity, how or whether it can be categorised, and the relationship betwe ...

), 1.9 per cent

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

and 1.2 per cent of other ethnic heritage. Kidd identifies

, Longsight,

, as centres of population for ethnic minorities. Manchester's Irish Festival, including a

St Patrick's Day Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick ( ga, Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit=the Day of the Festival of Patrick), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patr ...

parade, is one of Europe's largest. There is also a well-established

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Aust ...

in the city with a substantial number of Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. The area also attracts large numbers of Chinese students to the city who, in attending the local universities, contribute to Manchester having the third-largest Chinese population in Europe. Ethnicity of Manchester, from 1991 to 2021: Ethnicity of school pupils

Economy

The

does not produce economic data for the City of Manchester alone, but includes four other metropolitan boroughs,

Stockport Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is withi ...

Tameside The Metropolitan Borough of Tameside is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in England. It is named after the River Tame, which flows through the borough, and includes the towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Audenshaw, Denton, Droylsden, ...

Trafford Trafford is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England, with an estimated population of 235,493 in 2017. It covers Retrieved on 13 December 2007. and includes the area of Old Trafford and the towns of Altrincham, Stretford, Ur ...

, in an area named Greater Manchester South, which had a GVA of £34.8 billion. The economy grew relatively strongly between 2002 and 2012, when growth was 2.3 per cent above the national average. The wider

metropolitan economy A metropolitan economy refers to the cohesive, naturally evolving concentration of industries, commerce, markets, firms, housing, human capital, infrastructure and other economic elements that are comprised in a particular metropolitan area. Rat ...

is the third largest in the United Kingdom. It is ranked as a beta world city by the

Globalization and World Cities Research Network The Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) is a think tank that studies the relationships between world cities in the context of globalization. It is based in the geography department of Loughborough University in Leicestershir ...

. As the UK economy continues to recover from its 2008–2010 downturn, Manchester compares favourably according to recent figures. In 2012 it showed the strongest annual growth in business stock (5 per cent) of all core cities. The city had a relatively sharp increase in the number of business deaths, the largest increase in all the core cities, but this was offset by strong growth in new businesses, resulting in strong net growth. Manchester's civic leadership has a reputation for business acumen. It owns two of the country's four busiest airports and uses its earnings to fund local projects. Meanwhile,

KPMG KPMG International Limited (or simply KPMG) is a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations. Headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands, although incorporated in London, England, KPMG is a net ...

's competitive alternative report found that in 2012 Manchester had the 9th lowest tax cost of any industrialised city in the world, and fiscal devolution has come earlier to Manchester than to any other British city: it can keep half the extra taxes it gets from transport investment. KPMG's competitive alternative report also found that Manchester was Europe's most affordable city featured, ranking slightly better than the Dutch cities of

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte (river), Rotte'') is the second largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the Prov ...

and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

, which all have a cost-of-living index of less than 95. Manchester is a city of contrast, where some of the country's most deprived and most affluent neighbourhoods can be found. According to 2010

Indices of Multiple Deprivation Indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) are widely-used datasets within the UK to classify the relative deprivation (essentially a measure of poverty) of small areas. Multiple components of deprivation are weighted with different strengths and compi ...

, Manchester is the 4th most deprived local council in England. Unemployment throughout 2012–2013 averaged 11.9 per cent, which was above national average, but lower than some of the country's comparable large cities. On the other hand, Greater Manchester is home to more multi-millionaires than anywhere outside London, with the City of Manchester taking up most of the tally. In 2013 Manchester was ranked 6th in the UK for quality of life, according to a rating of the UK's 12 largest cities. Women fare better in Manchester than the rest of the country in comparative pay with men. The per hours-worked

gender pay gap The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted ...

is 3.3 per cent compared with 11.1 per cent for Britain. 37 per cent of the working-age population in Manchester have degree-level qualifications, as opposed to an average of 33 per cent across other core cities, although its schools under-perform slightly compared with the national average. Manchester has the largest UK office market outside London, according to GVA Grimley, with a quarterly office uptake (averaged over 2010–2014) of some 250,000 square ft – equivalent to the quarterly office uptake of

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popul ...

, Liverpool and Newcastle combined and 90,000 square feet more than the nearest rival, Birmingham. The strong office market in Manchester has been partly attributed to "northshoring", (from

offshoring Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state gove ...

) which entails the relocation or alternative creation of jobs away from the overheated South to areas where office space is possibly cheaper and the workforce market less saturated.

Landmarks

Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to

contemporary architecture Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century. No single style is dominant. Contemporary architects work in several different styles, from postmodernism, high-tech architecture and new interpretations of traditional architec ...

. The widespread use of

red brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

characterises the city, much of the architecture of which harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Just outside the immediate city centre are a large number of former

s, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure, while many have been redeveloped as apartment buildings and office space.

, in

Albert Square Walford is a fictional borough of east London in the BBC soap opera '' EastEnders''. It is the primary setting for the soap. ''EastEnders'' is filmed at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, towards the north-west of London. Much of the location ...

, was built in the

Gothic revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style and is seen as one of the most important Victorian buildings in England. Manchester also has a number of skyscrapers built in the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest being the CIS Tower near Manchester Victoria station until the Beetham Tower was completed in 2006. The latter exemplifies a new surge in high-rise building. It includes a

Hilton hotel Hilton Hotels & Resorts (formerly known as Hilton Hotels) is a global brand of full-service hotels and resorts and the flagship brand of American multinational hospitality company Hilton. The original company was founded by Conrad Hilton. As ...

, a restaurant and apartments. The largest skyscraper is now Deansgate Square South Tower, at 201 metres (659 feet).

The Green Building The Green Building is an environmentally conscious mixed-use development situated in Manchester. The Green Building was designed by Farrells, who aimed to create a sustainable environment on an unusual triangular plot, adjacent to Oxford Road st ...

, opposite Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, while the recently completed One Angel Square, is one of the most sustainable large buildings in the world. The award-winning

in the north of the city borough is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, covering of parkland. The city has 135 parks, gardens, and open spaces. Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser,

Oliver Heywood Oliver Heywood (9 September 1825 – 1892) was an English banker and philanthropist. Born in Irlam O'Th' Height, Lancashire, the son of Benjamin Heywood, and educated at Eton College, Heywood joined the family business, Heywood's Bank in ...

William Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-conse ...

and

John Bright John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn La ...

Piccadilly Gardens Piccadilly Gardens is a green space in Manchester city centre, England, on the edge of the Northern Quarter. It takes its name from the adjacent street, Piccadilly, which runs across the city centre from Market Street to London Road. The g ...

has monuments dedicated to

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...

Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Excheque ...

James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was ...

and the

Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister ...

. The cenotaph in St Peter's Square is Manchester's main memorial to its war dead. Designed by

Edwin Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memor ...

, it echoes the original on Whitehall in London. The

Alan Turing Memorial The ''Alan Turing Memorial'', situated in Sackville Gardens in Manchester, England, is a sculpture in memory of Alan Turing, a pioneer of modern computing. Turing is believed to have taken his own life in 1954, two years after being convic ...

Sackville Park Sackville Gardens is a public space in Manchester, England. It is bounded by Manchester College's Shena Simon Campus on one side and Whitworth Street, Sackville Street, the Rochdale Canal and Canal Street on the others. The land was purchased ...

commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A larger-than-life statue of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square (having stood for many years in

Platt Fields Platt Fields Park is a large public park in Fallowfield, Manchester, England which is home to Platt Hall. Fallowfield lies to the south and Wilmslow Road runs along its eastern edge. Description The centrepiece of the park is a large pleasure ...

) was presented to the city by Mr and Mrs Charles Phelps Taft of

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...

, Ohio, to mark the part Lancashire played in the cotton famine and

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

of 1861–1865. A

Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France an ...

is on display near Manchester Airport. Manchester has six designated local nature reserves: Chorlton Water Park, Blackley Forest, Clayton Vale and Chorlton Ees, Ivy Green, Boggart Hole Clough and

Highfield Country Park Highfield Country Park is a area of open land, situated on the east side of Levenshulme, Manchester, that stretches to the east of Broom Avenue across to the rear of Reddish Golf Course and to the junction of Longford Road, Reddish and Nelstro ...

Transport

Rail

Manchester Liverpool Road was the world's first purpose-built passenger and goods railway station and served as the Manchester terminus on the

Liverpool & Manchester Railway The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively ...

– the world's first

inter-city Inter-city rail services are express passenger train services that run services that connect cities over longer distances than commuter or regional trains. There is no precise definition of inter-city rail; its meaning may vary from country ...

passenger railway. It is still extant and its buildings form part of the Science & Industry Museum. Piccadilly Station Manchester - geograph

Two of the city's four main line termini did not survive the 1960s: Manchester Central and Manchester Exchange each closed in 1969. In addition, Manchester Mayfield station closed to passenger services in 1960; its buildings and platforms are still extant, next to Piccadilly station, but are due to be redeveloped in the 2020s. Today, the city is well served by its rail network although it is now working to capacity, and is at the centre of an extensive county-wide railway network, including the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

, with two mainline stations:

Manchester Piccadilly Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. Opened as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and became Manchester Piccadilly in 1960. Located to the south-east of Manchester city ...

and

Manchester Victoria Manchester Victoria station in Manchester, England is a combined mainline railway station and Metrolink tram stop. Situated to the north of the city centre on Hunts Bank, close to Manchester Cathedral, it adjoins Manchester Arena which was co ...

. The Manchester station group – comprising Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria,

Manchester Oxford Road Manchester Oxford Road railway station is a railway station in Manchester, England, at the junction of Whitworth Street West and Oxford Street. It opened in 1849 and was rebuilt in 1960. It is the second busiest of the four stations in Manch ...

and

Deansgate Deansgate is a main road (part of the A56) through Manchester City Centre, England. It runs roughly north–south in a near straight route through the western part of the city centre and is the longest road in the city centre at over one mile ...

– is the third busiest in the United Kingdom, with 44.9 million passengers recorded in 2017/2018. The

High Speed 2 High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway line in England, the first phase of which is under construction in stages and due for completion between 2029 and 2033, depending on approval for later stages. The new line will run from its m ...

link to

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

and

is also planned, which if built will include a tunnel under Manchester on the final approach into an upgraded Piccadilly station. Recent improvements in Manchester as part of the

Northern Hub The Northern Hub was a rail upgrade programme between 2009 and 2020 in Northern England to improve and increase train services and reduce journey times between its major cities and towns, by electrifying lines and removing a major rail bottlenec ...

in the 2010s have been numerous electrification schemes into and through Manchester, redevelopment of Victoria station and construction of the

Ordsall Chord Ordsall Chord, also known as the Castlefield Curve, is a short railway line in Ordsall, Salford, England, which links and Manchester Oxford Road to , designed to increase capacity and reduce journey times into and through Manchester. It allow ...

directly linking Victoria and Piccadilly. Work on two new through platforms at Piccadilly and an extensive upgrade at Oxford Road had not commenced as of 2019. Manchester city centre, specifically the

Castlefield Corridor The Castlefield corridor (also known as the Deansgate corridor) is a railway corridor between Castlefield junction and Fairfield Street junction in Greater Manchester, England. The corridor forms the eastern end of the southerly Liverpool–M ...

, suffers from constrained rail capacity that frequently leads to delays and cancellations – a 2018 report found that all three major Manchester stations are among the top ten worst stations in the United Kingdom for punctuality, with Oxford Road deemed the worst in the country.

Metrolink (tram)

Manchester became the first city in the UK to acquire a modern light rail tram system when the

Manchester Metrolink Manchester Metrolink (branded locally simply as Metrolink) is a tram/ light rail system in Greater Manchester, England. The network has 99 stops along of standard-gauge route, making it the most extensive light rail system in the United Ki ...

opened in 1992. In 2016–2017, 37.8 million passenger journeys were made on the system. The present system mostly runs on former commuter rail lines converted for light rail use, and crosses the city centre via on-street tram lines. The network consists of eight lines with 99 stops. A new line to the Trafford Centre opened in 2020. Manchester city centre is also serviced by over a dozen heavy and light rail-based park and ride sites.

Bus

The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London, with over 50 bus companies operating in the

region radiating from the city. In 2011, 80 per cent of public transport journeys in Greater Manchester were made by bus, amounting to 220 million passenger journeys each year. After

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

in 1986, the bus system was taken over by GM Buses, which after privatisation was split into GM Buses North and GM Buses South. Later these were taken over by

First Greater Manchester First Greater ManchesterCompanies House extract company no 28186 ...

and

Stagecoach Manchester Stagecoach ManchesterCompanies House extract company no 2818654

. Much of the First Greater Manchester business was sold to Diamond North West and Go North West in 2019. Go North West operate a three-route

zero-fare Free public transport, often called fare-free public transit or zero-fare public transport, refers to public transport funded in full by means other than by collecting fares from passengers. It may be funded by national, regional or local gove ...

Manchester Metroshuttle free bus is a zero-fare bus system that operates in Greater Manchester. The system was first introduced in Manchester city centre in 2002, with three routes linking the city's major thoroughfares and stations with its main commercial, financ ...

, which carries 2.8 million commuters a year around Manchester's business districts. Stagecoach Manchester is the

Stagecoach Group Stagecoach Group is a transport group based in Perth, Scotland. It operates buses, express coaches and a tram service in the United Kingdom. History Stagecoach was born out of deregulation of the British express coach market in the early ...

's largest subsidiary and operates around 690 buses.

Air

serves Manchester,

and

North Wales North Wales ( cy, Gogledd Cymru) is a regions of Wales, region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders Mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, ...

. The airport is the third busiest in the United Kingdom, with over double the number of annual passengers of the next busiest non-London airport. Services cover many destinations in Europe, North America, the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than any other airport in Britain). A second runway was opened in 2001 and there have been continued terminal improvements. The airport has the highest rating available: "''Category 10''", encompassing an elite group of airports able to handle "''Code F''" aircraft, including the

Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was annou ...

and Boeing 747-8. From September 2010 the airport became one of only 17 airports in the world and the only UK airport other than

Heathrow Airport Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others be ...

and

Gatwick Airport Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after ...

to operate the Airbus A380. A smaller City Airport Manchester exists to the west of Manchester city centre. It was Manchester's first municipal airport and became the site of the first

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

tower in the UK, and the first municipal airfield in the UK to be licensed by the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of Stat ...

. Today, private charter flights and

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

use City. It also has a flight school, and both the Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit and the North West Air Ambulance have helicopters based there.

Canal

An extensive canal network, including the

, was built to carry freight from the Industrial Revolution onward; the canals are still maintained, though now largely repurposed for leisure use. In 2012, plans were approved to introduce a

water taxi A water taxi or a water bus is a watercraft used to provide public or private transport, usually, but not always, in an urban environment. Service may be scheduled with multiple stops, operating in a similar manner to a bus, or ...

service between Manchester city centre and

MediaCityUK MediaCityUK is a mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside Media ...

. It ceased to operate in June 2018, citing poor infrastructure.

Cycling

Cycling for transportation and leisure enjoys popularity in Manchester and the city also plays a major role in British cycle racing.

Culture

Music

Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include Van der Graaf Generator,

Oasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

The Smiths The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982. They comprised the singer Morrissey, the guitarist Johnny Marr, the bassist Andy Rourke and the drummer Mike Joyce. They are regarded as one of the most important acts to eme ...

Joy Division Joy Division were an English rock band formed in Salford in 1976. The group consisted of vocalist Ian Curtis, guitarist/keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris. Sumner and Hook formed the band after atte ...

and its successor group New Order,

Buzzcocks Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band formed in Bolton, England in 1976 by singer-songwriter-guitarist Pete Shelley and singer-songwriter Howard Devoto. They are regarded as a seminal influence on the Manchester music scene, the indepen ...

The Stone Roses The Stone Roses were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1983. One of the pioneering groups of the Madchester movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band's classic and most prominent lineup consisted of vocalist Ian Brown, ...

, The Fall,

The Durutti Column The Durutti Column are an English post-punk band formed in 1978 in Manchester, England.Strong, Martin C. (1999) "The Great Alternative & Indie Discography", Canongate, The band is a project of guitarist and occasional pianist Vini Reilly wh ...

10cc 10cc are an English rock music, rock band formed in Stockport in 1972. The group initially consisted of four musicians – Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme – who had written and recorded together since 1968. The grou ...

Godley & Creme Godley & Creme were an English rock duo formally established in Manchester in 1977 by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. The pair began releasing music as a duo after their departure from the rock band 10cc. In 1979, they directed their first music v ...

The Verve The Verve were an English rock band formed in Wigan in 1990 by lead vocalist Richard Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, bass guitarist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury. Guitarist and keyboard player Simon Tong later became a member in ...

Elbow The elbow is the region between the arm and the forearm that surrounds the elbow joint. The elbow includes prominent landmarks such as the olecranon, the cubital fossa (also called the chelidon, or the elbow pit), and the lateral and the me ...

Doves Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

, The Charlatans,

M People M People (stylised as ''M''People) is an English dance music band that formed in 1990 and achieved success throughout most of the 1990s. The name M People is taken from the first letter of the first name of band member Mike Pickering, who form ...

The 1975 The 1975 are an English pop rock band formed in 2002 in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Now based in Manchester, the band consists of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Matthew "Matty" Healy, lead guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald, and drummer ...

Simply Red Simply Red are a British soul and pop band formed in Manchester in 1985. The lead vocalist of the band is singer and songwriter Mick Hucknall, who, by the time the band initially disbanded in 2010, was the only original member left. Since t ...

Take That Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer ...

Dutch Uncles Dutch Uncles are an English indie pop band from Marple, England. They are known for their use of atypical time signatures within a pop context, and the androgynous vocals of frontman Duncan Wallis. Biography Originally from Marple, the band s ...

Everything Everything Everything Everything are an English art rock band from Manchester that formed in late 2007. Noted for their eclectic sound and complex, sociopolitical lyrics, the band have released six albums to date – 2010's '' Man Alive'', 2013's '' Arc'' ...

Pale Waves Pale Waves are an English rock band from Manchester, formed in 2014. It was founded originally as Creek when lead singer and guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie met drummer Ciara Doran while attending university in Manchester. The other members are ...

and The Outfield. Manchester was credited as the main driving force behind British indie music of the 1980s led by The Smiths, later including The Stone Roses,

Happy Mondays Happy Mondays are an English rock band formed in Salford in 1980. The original line-up was Shaun Ryder (vocals), his brother Paul Ryder (bass), Gary Whelan (drums), Paul Davis (keyboard), and Mark Day (guitar). Mark "Bez" Berry later joine ...

, Inspiral Carpets, and James. The later groups came from what became known as the "

Madchester Madchester was a musical and cultural scene that developed in the English city of Manchester in the late 1980s, closely associated with the indie dance scene. Indie-dance (sometimes referred to as indie-rave) saw artists merging indie music ...

" scene that also centred on

The Haçienda The Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, North West England, which became famous during the Manchester years of the 1980s and early 1990s. It was run by the record label Factory Records. The club opened in 1982, eventually ...

nightclub developed by the founder of

Factory Records Factory Records was a Manchester-based British independent record label founded in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus. The label featured several important acts on its roster, including Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, the Duru ...

, Tony Wilson. Although from southern England,

The Chemical Brothers The Chemical Brothers are an English electronic music duo formed by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons in Manchester in 1989. They were pioneers (along with the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, the Crystal Method, and other acts) in bringing the big beat gen ...

subsequently formed in Manchester. Former Smiths frontman

Morrissey Steven Patrick Morrissey (; born 22 May 1959), known professionally as Morrissey, is an English singer and songwriter. He came to prominence as the frontman and lyricist of rock band the Smiths, who were active from 1982 to 1987. Since th ...

, whose lyrics often refer to Manchester locations and culture, later found international success as a solo artist. Previously, notable Manchester acts of the 1960s include

The Hollies The Hollies are a British pop rock band, formed in 1962. One of the leading British groups of the 1960s and into the mid-1970s, they are known for their distinctive three-part vocal harmony style. Allan Clarke and Graham Nash founded the band ...

Herman's Hermits Herman's Hermits are an English beat, rock and pop group formed in 1964 in Manchester, originally called Herman and His Hermits and featuring lead singer Peter Noone. Produced by Mickie Most, the Hermits charted with number ones in the UK ...

, and Davy Jones of the Monkees (famed in the mid-1960s for their albums and their American TV show), and the earlier

Bee Gees The Bee Gees were a musical group formed in 1958 by brothers Barry Gibb, Barry, Robin Gibb, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio were especially successful in popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later as prominent performers in ...

, who grew up in Chorlton. Another notable contemporary band from near Manchester is

The Courteeners Courteeners are an English band formed in Middleton in 2006 by Liam Fray (lead guitar/vocals), Michael Campbell (drums/backing vocals), Daniel "Conan" Moores (rhythm guitar) and Mark Cuppello (bass); the latter was replaced by the band's produc ...

consisting of Liam Fray and four close friends. Singer-songwriter Ren Harvieu is also from Greater Manchester. MEN Arena, Manchester (7263927380)

Its main pop music venue is

, voted "International Venue of the Year" in 2007.
With over 21,000 seats, it is the largest arena of its type in Europe. In terms of concertgoers, it is the busiest indoor arena in the world, ahead of

Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylv ...

in New York and

The O2 Arena The O2 Arena, commonly known as the O2 (stylised as The O2 arena), is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the centre of the O2 entertainment complex on the Greenwich Peninsula in southeast London. It opened in its present form in 2007. It has the ...

in London, which are second and third busiest. Other venues include

Manchester Apollo The O2 Apollo Manchester (known locally as The Apollo and formerly Manchester Apollo) is a concert venue in Ardwick Green, Manchester, England. It is a Grade II listed building, with a capacity of 3,500 (2,514 standing, 986 seats). History The ...

Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no governm ...

Victoria Warehouse The O2 Victoria Warehouse is a live music venue in Old Trafford, Manchester. The venue is made up of two storage warehouses used during the early to mid 20th century. It was redeveloped as a music venue in 2012 and given its current name in 20 ...

and the

Manchester Academy The Manchester Academy, originally known as the University of Manchester Main Hall, is composed of four concert venues, located on the campus of the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. The four venues are: Academy 1, 2 and 3 ...

. Smaller venues include the

Band on the Wall Band on the Wall is a live music venue in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, England. History Early history The building dates back to around 1862 when a local brewery, the McKenna Brothers, built it as the flagship pub of their operation. I ...

, the Night and Day Café, the Ruby Lounge, and The Deaf Institute. Manchester also has the most indie and rock music events outside London. Manchester has two

symphony orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

s, the Hallé and the

BBC Philharmonic The BBC Philharmonic is a national British broadcasting symphony orchestra and is one of five radio orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Philharmonic is a department of the BBC North Group division based at Med ...

, and a

chamber orchestra Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

, the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s, the city was home to a so-called " Manchester School" of classical composers, which was composed of

Harrison Birtwistle Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include '' T ...

Peter Maxwell Davies Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Musi ...

, David Ellis and

Alexander Goehr Peter Alexander Goehr (; born 10 August 1932) is an English composer and academic. Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and composer Walter Goehr, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. In his early twenties he emerged as a centra ...

. Manchester is a centre for musical education: the

and Chetham's School of Music. Forerunners of the RNCM were the

Northern School of Music The Northern School of Music was a music college located in Manchester which operated between 1920 and 1972 before merging with the Royal Manchester College of Music to form the Royal Northern College of Music. History The Northern School of M ...

(founded 1920) and the

Royal Manchester College of Music The Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) was a tertiary level conservatoire in Manchester, north-west England. It was founded in 1893 by the German-born conductor Sir Charles Hallé in 1893. In 1972, the Royal Manchester College of Music ...

(founded 1893), which merged in 1973. One of the earliest instructors and classical music pianists/conductors at the RNCM, shortly after its founding, was the Russian-born

Arthur Friedheim Arthur Friedheim (russian: Артур Фридхайм, 14/26 October 1859 – 19 October 1932) was a Russian-born concert pianist and composer who was one of Franz Liszt's foremost pupils. One of Friedheim's students was Rildia Bee O'Bryan C ...

, (1859–1932), who later had the music library at the famed

Peabody Institute The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University is a private conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1857 and opened in 1866 by merchant/financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869) ...

conservatory of music in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

, Maryland, named after him. The main classical music venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street until the opening in 1996 of the 2,500 seat

Bridgewater Hall The Bridgewater Hall is a concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s, and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra as well as to the Hallé ...

. Brass band music, a tradition in the north of England, is important to Manchester's musical heritage; some of the UK's leading bands, such as the CWS Manchester Band and the

Fairey Band The Fairey Band is a brass band based in Heaton Chapel in Stockport, Greater Manchester. The band has achieved fame in modern music circles with its appearances playing Acid Brass although they still play traditional brass band music and part ...

, are from Manchester and surrounding areas, and the Whit Friday brass-band contest takes place annually in the neighbouring areas of Saddleworth and

Performing arts

Manchester has a thriving theatre, opera and dance scene, with a number of large performance venues, including

Manchester Opera House The Opera House in Quay Street, Manchester, England, is a 1,920-seater commercial touring theatre that plays host to touring musicals, ballet, concerts and a Christmas pantomime. It is a Grade II listed building. The Opera House is one of the mai ...

, which feature large-scale touring shows and West End productions; the

Palace Theatre Palace Theatre, or Palace Theater, is the name of many theatres in different countries, including: Australia * Palace Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria *Palace Theatre, Sydney, New South Wales Canada *Palace Theatre, housed in the Robillard Block, M ...

; and the

Royal Exchange Theatre The Royal Exchange is a grade II listed building in Manchester, England. It is located in the city centre on the land bounded by St Ann's Square, Exchange Street, Market Street, Cross Street and Old Bank Street. The complex includes the Royal ...

in Manchester's former cotton exchange, which is the largest

theatre in the round A theatre in the round, arena theatre or central staging is a space for theatre in which the audience surrounds the stage. Theatre-in-the-round was common in ancient theatre, particularly that of Greece and Rome, but was not widely explored ...

in the UK. Smaller venues include the Contact Theatre and Z-arts in Hulme. The Dancehouse on Oxford Road is dedicated to dance productions. In 2014,

HOME A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. ...

, a new custom-built arts complex opened. Housing two theatre spaces, five cinemas and an art exhibition space, it replaced the Cornerhouse and The Library Theatre. Since 2007 the city has hosted the

Manchester International Festival The Manchester International Festival is a biennial international arts festival, with a specific focus on original new work, held in the English city of Manchester and run by Factory International. The festival is a biennial event, first tak ...

, a biennial international

arts festival An arts festival is a festival that can encompass a wide range of art forms including music, dance, film, fine art, literature, poetry and isn't solely focused on visual arts. Arts festivals may feature a mixed program that include music, lit ...

with a focus on original work, which has included major new commissions by artists, including Bjork. A government statement in 2014 announced a £78 million grant for a new "large-scale, ultra-flexible arts space" for the city. Later the council stated it had secured a further £32 million. The £110 million venue was confirmed in July 2016.Pdf.
The theatre, to be called

The Factory The Factory was Andy Warhol's studio in New York City, which had four locations between 1963 and 1987. The Factory became famed for its parties in the 1960s. It was the hip hangout spot for artists, musicians, celebrities and Warhol's superstar ...

, after Manchester's

, will provide a permanent home for the Manchester International Festival. It is due to open at the end of 2019.

Museums and galleries

Manchester's museums celebrate Manchester's Roman history, rich industrial heritage and its role in the

, the

textile industry The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, textile, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be Natural material, natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. Industry p ...

, the Trade Union movement,

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

and

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

. A reconstructed part of the Roman fort of Mamucium is open to the public in

. The Science and Industry Museum, housed in the former Liverpool Road railway station, has a large collection of

steam locomotives A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

, industrial machinery, aircraft and a replica of the world's first stored computer program (known as the

Manchester Baby The Manchester Baby, also called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill, and ran its ...

). The Museum of Transport displays a collection of historic buses and trams. Trafford Park in the neighbouring borough of Trafford is home to Imperial War Museum North. The Manchester Museum opened to the public in the 1880s, has notable

Egyptology Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native relig ...

and natural history collections. Shackleton AEW

The municipally owned

Manchester Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three ...

in Mosley Street houses a permanent collection of European painting and one of Britain's main collections of

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Jam ...

paintings. In the south of the city, the Whitworth Art Gallery displays modern art, sculpture and textiles and was voted Museum of the Year in 2015. Other exhibition spaces and museums in Manchester include

Islington Mill Islington Mill is a six-storey Georgian mill building, located at 1 James Street, Ordsall, Salford, England. The name 'Islington Mill' is commonly used to refer to the wider collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings that re ...

in Salford, the National Football Museum at Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, the Manchester Costume Gallery at Platt Fields Park, the

People's History Museum The People's History Museum (the National Museum of Labour History until 2001) in Manchester, England, is the UK's national centre for the collection, conservation, interpretation and study of material relating to the history of working people ...

and the

Manchester Jewish Museum Manchester Jewish Museum occupies the former Spanish and Portuguese synagogue and an adjacent building on Cheetham Hill Road in Manchester, England. It is a grade II* listed building. The synagogue was completed in 1874 but the building became ...

. The work of

-born painter , known for "matchstick" paintings of industrial Manchester and Salford, can be seen in the City and Whitworth Manchester galleries, and at

the Lowry The Lowry is a theatre and gallery complex at Salford Quays, Salford, Greater Manchester, England. It is named after the early 20th-century painter L. S. Lowry, known for his paintings of industrial scenes in North West England. The complex ope ...

art centre in

(in the neighbouring borough of Salford), which devotes a large permanent exhibition to his works.

Literature

Manchester is a

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

City of Literature UNESCO's City of Literature programme is part of the wider Creative Cities Network. The ''Network'' was launched in 2004, and now has member cities in seven creative fields. The other creative fields are: Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gas ...

known for a "radical literary history". Manchester in the 19th century featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought. They include

Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many st ...

's novel '' Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life'' (1848), and studies such as '' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844'' by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

. The two began writing ''

The Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Commu ...

'' in

– founded in 1653 and claiming to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Elsewhere in the city, the

John Rylands Library The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a Victorian era, late-Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to t ...

holds an extensive collection of early printing. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, believed to be the earliest extant New Testament text, is on permanent display there.

Letitia Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. The writings of Landon are transitional between Romanticism and the Victorian Age. Her first major breakthrough ...

's poetical illustration ''Manchester'' to a vista over the city by G. Pickering in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, records the rapid growth of the city and its cultural importance.

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

is reputed to have set his novel '' Hard Times'' in the city, and though partly modelled on

Preston Preston is a place name, surname and given name that may refer to: Places England *Preston, Lancashire, an urban settlement **The City of Preston, Lancashire, a borough and non-metropolitan district which contains the settlement **County Boro ...

, it shows the influence of his friend Mrs Gaskell. Gaskell penned all her novels but ''Mary Barton'' at her home in

84 Plymouth Grove 84 Plymouth Grove, now known as Elizabeth Gaskell's House, is a writer's house museum in Manchester. The Grade II* listed neoclassical villa was the residence of William and Elizabeth Gaskell from 1850 till their deaths in 1884 and 1865 respect ...

. Often her house played host to influential authors: Dickens,

Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted i ...

Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel '' Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the har ...

and Charles Eliot Norton, for example. It is now open as a literary museum.

began writing her novel ''

Jane Eyre ''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first ...

'' in 1846, while staying at lodgings in

. She was accompanying her father Patrick, who was convalescing in the city after cataract surgery. She probably envisioned Manchester Cathedral churchyard as the burial place for Jane's parents and the birthplace of Jane herself. Also associated with the city is the Victorian poet and novelist

Isabella Banks Isabella Banks (; 25 March 1821 – 4 May 1897), also known as Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks, was an English novelist and poet. Born in Manchester, England, Banks is most widely remembered today for her book '' The Manchester Man'', published in 18 ...

, famed for her 1876 novel '' The Manchester Man''. Anglo-American author

Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (published in 1885–1886), '' A Little ...

was born in the city's

district in 1849, and wrote much of her classic children's novel '' The Secret Garden'' while visiting nearby Salford's

Buile Hill Park Buile Hill Park is a Grade II listed public park in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. Covering it is the largest public park in the city, as well as the second oldest after Peel Park. The park and mansion are owned by Salford City Council. ...

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire ''A Clockwork ...

is among the 20th-century writers who made Manchester their home. He wrote here the

dystopian A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

satire ''

A Clockwork Orange ''A Clockwork Orange'' may refer to: * ''A Clockwork Orange'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess ** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (film), a 1971 film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel *** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (soundtrack), the film ...

'' in 1962. Dame

Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first ...

Poet Laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch ...

from 2009 to 2019, moved to the city in 1996 and lives in West Didsbury.

Nightlife

The night-time economy of Manchester has expanded significantly since about 1993, with investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities. The more than 500 licensed premises in the city centre have a capacity to deal with more than visitors, with 110,000–130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night, making Manchester the most popular city for events at 79 per thousand people. The night-time economy has a value of about £100 million, and supports 12,000 jobs. The

scene of the 1980s, from which groups including

, the

, Inspiral Carpets,

808 State 808 State are an English electronic music group formed in 1987 in Manchester, taking their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine. They were formed by Graham Massey, Martin Price and Gerald Simpson. They released their debut album, '' Newb ...

, James and The Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as

. The period was the subject of the movie ''

24 Hour Party People ''24 Hour Party People'' is a 2002 British biographical comedy-drama film about Manchester's popular music community from 1976 to 1992, and specifically about Factory Records. It was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and directed by Michael Wint ...

''. Many of the big clubs suffered problems with organised crime at that time; Haslam describes one where staff were so completely intimidated that free admission and drinks were demanded (and given) and drugs were openly dealt. Following a series of drug-related violent incidents, The Haçienda closed in 1997. Canal street manchester

Gay village

Public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

s in the Canal Street area have had an LGBTQ+ clientele since at least 1940, and now form the centre of Manchester's LGBTQ+ community. Since the opening of new bars and clubs, the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend and has hosted a popular festival, Manchester Pride, each August since 1995.

Education

There are three universities in the City of Manchester. The

and

. The University of Manchester is the second largest full-time non-

collegiate university A collegiate university is a university in which functions are divided between a central administration and a number of constituent colleges. Historically, the first collegiate university was the University of Paris and its first college was the C ...

in the United Kingdom, created in 2004 by the merger of

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...

, founded in 1904, and

UMIST The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

, founded in 1956, having developed from the Mechanics' Institute founded, as indicated in the university's logo, in 1824. The University of Manchester includes the

Manchester Business School Alliance Manchester Business School (Alliance MBS) is the business school of the University of Manchester in Manchester, England. One of the most prestigious business schools in the United Kingdom, it is also the second oldest in the UK, and pro ...

, which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965.

was formed as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970. It gained university status in 1992, and in the same year absorbed Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education in South Cheshire. The Cheshire campus permanently closed in 2019.

The University of Law , motto_lang = lat , mottoeng = Let us know the laws and rights , established = ,2012 ( university status) , closed = , type = Private, for-profit , endowment ...

, the largest provider of vocation legal training in Europe, has a campus in the city. The three universities are grouped around Oxford Road on the southern side of the city centre, which forms Europe's largest urban higher-education precinct. Together they have a combined population of over 80,000 students as of 2022. One of Manchester's notable secondary schools is

Manchester Grammar School The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) in Manchester, England, is the largest independent school (UK), independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1515 as a Grammar school#free tuition, free grammar school next to Manchester C ...

. Established in 1515,
as a free grammar school next to what is now the cathedral, it moved in 1931 to Old Hall Lane in Fallowfield, south Manchester, to accommodate the growing student body. In the post-war period, it was a

direct grant grammar school A direct grant grammar school was a type of selective secondary school in the United Kingdom that existed between 1945 and 1976. One quarter of the places in these schools were directly funded by central government, while the remainder attracted ...

(i.e. partially state funded), but it reverted to independent status in 1976 after abolition of the direct-grant system. Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music. There are three schools nearby:

William Hulme's Grammar School William Hulme's Grammar School is a mixed all-through school in Whalley Range, Manchester, England. History William Hulme (1631–1691) of Hulme Hall, Stockport, was the founder of "Hulme's Charity" later known as the Hulme Trust. Follow ...

Withington Girls' School Withington Girls' School is an independent day school in Fallowfield, Manchester, United Kingdom, providing education for girls between the ages of seven and eighteen. Withington is a member of the Girls' Schools Association and the Headmasters ...

and

Manchester High School for Girls Manchester High School for Girls is an English independent day school for girls and a member of the Girls School Association. It is situated in Fallowfield, Manchester. The head mistress is Helen Jeys who took up the position in September 2020 ...

. In 2019, the Manchester

Local Education Authority Local education authorities (LEAs) were local councils in England that are responsible for education within their jurisdiction. The term was used to identify which council (district or county) is locally responsible for education in a system wit ...

was ranked second to last out of Greater Manchester's ten LEAs and 140th out of 151 in the country LEAs based on the percentage of pupils attaining grades 4 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs (

General Certificate of Secondary Education The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private sc ...

) with 56.2 per cent compared with the national average of 64.9 per cent. Of the 63 secondary schools in the LEA, four had 80 per cent or more pupils achieving Grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSEs:

, The King David High School, Manchester Islamic High School for Girls, and Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys.

Sport

Two

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

clubs bear the city's name –

Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

. Manchester City's home is the

City of Manchester Stadium The City of Manchester Stadium in Manchester, England, also known as the Etihad Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is the home of Premier League club Manchester City F.C., with a domestic football capacity of 53,400, making it the 6th-largest ...

in east Manchester, built for the

and then reconfigured as a football ground. Manchester United play home games at

Old Trafford Old Trafford () is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,310 it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after Wembl ...

, the largest club ground in the United Kingdom – although this is not located within the City of Manchester and is in the neighbouring metropolitan borough of

Lancashire County Cricket Club Lancashire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Lancashire in English cricket. The club has held first-class status since it was founded in 1864. Lancashire's home is Old Trafford Cricket Ground, although the team also play ...

also play in Trafford at Old Trafford Cricket Ground and regularly hosts international test matches. Sporting facilities built for the

include the City of Manchester Stadium,

National Squash Centre The National Squash Centre is a squash venue in Eastlands, Manchester, England, which was constructed for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Squash Centre is part of the Sportcity complex. Costing approximately £3.5m, the facilities incl ...

and

Manchester Aquatics Centre The Manchester Aquatics Centre, abbreviated MAC, is a public aquatics sports facility south of the city centre of Manchester, England, north of the main buildings of the University of Manchester near Manchester Metropolitan University. It was ...

. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...

for

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone o ...

and

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

for

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials, and is the home of

British Cycling British Cycling (formerly the British Cycling Federation) is the main national governing body for cycle sport in Great Britain. It administers most competitive cycling in Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It represents Bri ...

, UCI ProTeam

Team Sky Ineos Grenadiers () (stylised as INEOS Grenadiers) (formerly Team Sky from 2010 to 2019, and Team Ineos from 2019 to 2020) is a British professional cycling team that competes at the UCI WorldTeam level. The team is based at the National Cycl ...

and

Sky Track Cycling Sky Track Cycling was a professional track cycling team competing in the UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics series. The team, based at the Manchester Velodrome, was made up of British riders, including Olympic Gold medalists Chris Hoy, Jason ...

. The Manchester Velodrome, built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games, has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome hosted the

UCI Track Cycling World Championships The UCI Track Cycling World Championships are the set of world championship events for the various disciplines and distances in track cycling. They are regulated by the Union Cycliste Internationale. Before 1900, they were administered by the UCI ...

for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The

hosted the

FINA FINA (french: Fédération internationale de natation, en, International Swimming Federation, link=yes) (to be renamed as World Aquatics by ) is the international federation recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administer ...

World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester hosted the

World Squash Championships The World Squash Championships are squash events for men and women organised by the Professional Squash Association. The men's event was first held in 1976 in London, England and the women's was inaugurated in 1976 in Brisbane, Australia. Overv ...

in 2008, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship, the 2013 Ashes series,

2013 Rugby League World Cup The 2013 Rugby League World Cup was the fourteenth staging of the Rugby League World Cup and took place in England, Wales, France and Ireland. between 26 October and 30 November 2013. It was the main event of the year's Festival of World ...

and

2015 Rugby World Cup The 2015 Rugby World Cup was the eighth Rugby World Cup, the quadrennial rugby union world championship. The tournament was hosted by England from 18 September to 31 October. Of the 20 countries competing in the World Cup in 2011, there was on ...

Media

Print

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' newspaper was founded in the city in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian''. Until 2008, its head office was still in the city, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964. For many years most national newspapers had offices in Manchester: ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet ...

'', ''

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...

'', ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily Tabloid journalism, tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its Masthead (British publishing), masthead was simpl ...

'', '' The Sun''. At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, earning the city the nickname "second

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was n ...

". In the 1980s the titles closed their northern offices and centred their operations in London. The main regional newspaper in the city is the ''

Manchester Evening News The ''Manchester Evening News'' (''MEN'') is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in North West England, founded in 1868. It is published Monday–Saturday; a Sunday edition, the ''MEN on Sunday'', was launched in February 20 ...

'', which was for over 80 years the sister publication of ''The Manchester Guardian''. The ''Manchester Evening News'' has the largest circulation of a UK regional evening newspaper and is distributed free of charge in the city centre on Thursdays and Fridays, but paid for in the suburbs. Despite its title, it is available all day. Several local weekly free papers are distributed by the MEN group. The '' Metro North West'' is available free at Metrolink stops, rail stations and other busy locations. An attempt to launch a Northern daily newspaper, the ''North West Times'', employing journalists made redundant by other titles, closed in 1988. Another attempt was made with the ''

North West Enquirer The ''North West Enquirer'' was a short-lived weekly regional tabloid newspaper covering the North West region of England. Its circulation area encompassed the counties and areas of Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Ches ...

'', which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West, much in the same vein as the ''

Yorkshire Post ''The Yorkshire Post'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds in Yorkshire, England. It primarily covers stories from Yorkshire although its masthead carries the slogan "Yorkshire's National Newspaper". It was previously owned by ...

'' does for

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

or ''

The Northern Echo ''The Northern Echo'' is a regional daily morning newspaper based in the town of Darlington in North East England, serving mainly southern County Durham and northern Yorkshire. The paper covers national as well as regional news. In 2007, its ...

'' does for the

North East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

; it folded in October 2006.

Television

Manchester has been a centre of

television broadcasting A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...

since the 1950s. A number of television studios have been in operation around the city, and have since relocated to

in neighbouring Salford. The ITV franchise

Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its ...

has been based in Manchester since 1954. Now based at MediaCityUK, the company's former headquarters at

Granada Studios Old Granada Studios (known simply as Granada Studios and previously known as The Manchester Studios) is a television studio complex and events venue on Quay Street in Manchester with the facility to broadcast live and recorded television programm ...

Quay Street Quay Street is a street in the city centre of Manchester, England. The street, designated the A34, continues Peter Street westwards towards the River Irwell and Salford. It is the northern boundary of Spinningfields, the city's business dist ...

with its distinctive illuminated sign were a prominent landmark on the Manchester skyline for several decades. Granada produces ''

Coronation Street ''Coronation Street'' is an English soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres around a cobbled, terraced street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. Orig ...

,'' local news and programmes for North West England. Although its influence has waned, Granada had been described as "the best commercial television company in the world". With the growth in regional television in the 1950s, Manchester became one of the BBC's three main centres in England. In 1954, the BBC opened its first regional

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

studio outside London, Dickenson Road Studios, in a converted Methodist chapel in

. The first edition of ''

Top of the Pops ''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British Record chart, music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show ...

'' was broadcast here on New Year's Day 1964. From 1975, BBC programmes including '' Mastermind'', and ''

Real Story ''Real Story'' is a current affairs programme which aired on the British television channel BBC One at 19:30 GMT weekly on Mondays. It was hosted by Fiona Bruce who was also presenter of '' Crimewatch''. The programme was edited by Dave Stanfo ...

'', were made at New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road. The ''Cutting It'' series set in the city's Northern Quarter and '' The Street'' were set in Manchester as was ''

Life on Mars The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ...

''. Manchester was the regional base for

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

North West Region programmes before it relocated to MediaCityUK in nearby

.
The Manchester television channel,

Channel M Channel M was a regional television station, serving Greater Manchester. The station, originally known as ''Manchester Student Television'', was owned and operated by the GMG Regional Media division of Guardian Media Group. Coverage Original ...

, owned by the

Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...

operated from 2000, but closed in 2012. Manchester is also covered by two internet television channels: Quays News and Manchester.tv. The city had a new terrestrial channel from January 2014 when YourTV Manchester, which won the OFCOM licence bid in February 2013. It began its first broadcast, but in 2015, That's Manchester took over to air on 31 May and launched the freeview channel 8 service slot, before moving to channel 7 in April 2016.

Radio

The city has the highest number of local radio stations outside London, including BBC Radio Manchester, Hits Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, Heart North West, Smooth North West, Gold (British radio network), Gold, Radio X (United Kingdom), Radio X, NMFM (North Manchester FM) and XS Manchester. Student radio stations include Fuse FM at the University of Manchester and MMU Radio at the Manchester Metropolitan University. A community radio network is coordinated by Radio Regen, with stations covering Ardwick, Longsight and Levenshulme (All FM 96.9) and

(Wythenshawe FM 97.2).Se
Radio
at the Ofcom web site and subpages, especially th
directory of analogue radio stations
, the map (PDF), and the map (PDF). Retrieved on 6 November 2007. Defunct radio stations include Sunset 102, which became Kiss 102, then Galaxy Manchester), and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (later Imagine FM). These stations and pirate radio played a significant role in the city's house music culture, the

scene.

International relations

Manchester has formal Town twinning, twinning arrangements (or "friendship agreements") with several places. In addition, the British Council maintains a metropolitan centre in Manchester. *

, Netherlands (2007) *Bilwi, Nicaragua *Chemnitz, Germany (1983) *Córdoba, Spain, Córdoba, Spain *Faisalabad, Pakistan (1997) *Los Angeles, United States (2009) *Rehovot, Israel *Saint Petersburg, Russia (1962) *Wuhan, People's Republic of China (1986) *Melbourne, Australia *Osaka, Japan Manchester is home to the largest group of consul (representative), consuls in the UK outside London. The expansion of international trade links during the Industrial Revolution led to the introduction of the first consuls in the 1820s and since then over 800, from all parts of the world, have been based in Manchester. Manchester hosts consular services for most of the north of England.

References

External links

Manchester City CouncilOfficial tourist board site
{{Authority control Manchester, 1st-century establishments in Roman Britain 79 establishments Cities in North West England Metropolitan boroughs of Greater Manchester Populated places established in the 1st century Towns in Greater Manchester

Etymology

History

Early history

Industrial Revolution

Blitz

Post-Second World War

Since 2000

Government

Geography

Climate

Green belt

Demographics

Religion

Ethnicity

Economy

Landmarks

Transport

Rail

Metrolink (tram)

Bus

Air

Canal

Cycling

Culture

Music

Performing arts

Museums and galleries

Literature

Nightlife

Gay village

Education

Sport

Media

Print

Television

Radio

International relations

See also

References

Further reading

Architecture

General

Culture

Sport

External links