Manchester: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Manchester was the first place anywhere to be industrial on a city scale — in 1800 it had about seventy thousand people and by 1850 roughly three hundred thousand, almost all of them working cotton. Everything that follows from that was worked out here first: the factory system, the slums beside it, the trade unions, the free trade movement, and the writing that came out of looking at it. Two and a half hours, flat, and most of the museums are free.
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A short history of Manchester
In AD 79 the Romans built a fort called Mamucium, which gave Manchester its name. For centuries it was a market town, until in the 18th century it quickly became the centre of the cotton industry and was nicknamed 'Cottonopolis'. On 16 August 1819 cavalry attacked a workers' demonstration in St Peter's Field, in an event known as the Peterloo Massacre. In 1830 the railway to Liverpool opened here, the world's first passenger line between two cities. In 1917 Ernest Rutherford split the atom at the University of Manchester, and in 1948 one of the first computers to store a program in its memory ran here. In 1996 an IRA bomb destroyed part of the centre.
The ten best sights in Manchester
1Albert SquareThe civic square, and the Christmas markets fill it from mid-November
2Town HallA neo-Gothic palace from 1877, closed for restoration, and the outside is the show
3Central LibraryFree, a circular 1934 building modelled on the Pantheon, and the reading room is domed
4John Rylands LibraryFree, and the oldest known fragment of the New Testament is kept in it
5Manchester CathedralFree, and the medieval choir stalls have the finest misericords in Britain
6Manchester Art GalleryFree, the Pre-Raphaelite collection is the strongest outside London
7Whitworth Art GalleryFree, in a park, and the 2015 extension puts a glass café among the trees
8Science and Industry MuseumFree, on the site of the world’s first intercity railway station
9Manchester MuseumFree, and the Egyptian collection came from excavations the city funded
10Imperial War Museum NorthFree, a Libeskind building shaped as three shards of a shattered globe
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Manchester →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Manchester:
Free walking tours in Manchester
The first industrial city
Manchester was the first place anywhere to be industrial on a city scale — in 1800 it had about seventy thousand people and by 1850 roughly three hundred thousand, almost all of them working cotton. Everything that follows from that was worked out here first: the factory system, the slums beside it, the trade unions, the free trade movement, and the writing that came out of looking at it. Two and a half hours, flat, and most of the museums are free.
- Albert Square · The square is a statement: Manchester had no cathedral worth the name, no court and no royal connection, so when it became a city it built a town hall that cost almost a million pounds in 1877 money and put the square in front of it. The men on the plinths are a chemist, an engineer, a free-trade campaigner and a bishop — no kings and no generals.
- Town Hall · Alfred Waterhouse won the competition in 1868 with a plan that fits a neo-Gothic palace onto an awkward triangular site, and the great hall inside carries twelve murals by Ford Madox Brown on the city’s history — one of which shows a Flemish weaver teaching Mancunians their trade in the fourteenth century, which is the city telling you where it thinks it came from.
- Central Library · Opened in 1934 and built as a circle because the architect wanted the Pantheon: the domed reading room is thirty metres across and has no columns in it at all. It was the largest municipal library in the country when it opened, and it was built in the depths of the Depression deliberately, as public work.
- Science and Industry Museum · The museum occupies the terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830 — the first railway anywhere to carry passengers between two cities to a timetable, with no horses involved. The 1830 warehouse and station building are still standing, which makes this the oldest surviving passenger railway station in the world.
- Castlefield · Within four hundred metres you have a Roman fort of about AD 79, the first true canal in Britain from 1761, and the first intercity railway from 1830 — three separate transport revolutions stacked on one patch of ground, each one built because the one before it had run out of capacity.
- Bridgewater Canal · The Duke of Bridgewater had coal on his land at Worsley and no cheap way to move it, so he paid for a canal with no locks that ran over an aqueduct and into his own mine. It opened in 1761 and the price of coal in Manchester halved within a year. Every canal in Britain was built because of what this one proved.
Cotton, Peterloo and the arguments
Everything Manchester is known for politically came out of the same fact: a very large number of people doing badly paid work in one place, and no representation in parliament at all until 1832. The massacre of 1819, the Anti-Corn Law League, the co-operative movement, the trade union congress, the Communist Manifesto — all of them were written, argued or carried out within a mile of here. Two hours.
- Free Trade Hall · It stands on St Peter’s Field, where in August 1819 cavalry charged a crowd of about sixty thousand people demanding parliamentary reform and killed eighteen of them. The hall was named for the free trade campaign that followed, and in 1966 a man in its audience shouted "Judas" at Bob Dylan for playing electric. It is a hotel now.
- Manchester Art Gallery · The Pre-Raphaelite collection here is the strongest outside London, and it is here for a reason: the cotton merchants who bought these paintings wanted art that was moral, detailed and new, and they distrusted the old masters as the taste of an aristocracy they had no part in. Buying contemporary was a statement about who they were.
- John Rylands Library · Enriqueta Rylands built it between 1890 and 1900 in memory of her husband, a cotton millionaire, and spared nothing — it had electric light generated on site and an air filtration system, because Manchester soot would have destroyed the books. It holds the St John Fragment, a scrap of papyrus from about 125 AD that is the oldest known piece of any New Testament text.
- Royal Exchange · At its peak this was the largest trading floor in the world and eighty per cent of the world’s finished cotton was priced in this room. The last trading day was in 1968 and the board still shows the closing prices from it. A theatre in the round was built inside in 1976 — a steel module standing on its own legs, because the floor could not take the weight.
- Manchester Cathedral · A parish church that was made a cathedral only in 1847, when the city had grown too large to ignore. The medieval choir stalls are the thing: the misericords under the seats — carved ledges for tired monks to lean on — include a man playing backgammon with the devil and a fox preaching to geese, and they are among the finest in Britain.
- Ancoats · Called the world’s first industrial suburb: by 1815 it had the largest concentration of steam-powered cotton mills anywhere, and the housing went up around them with no drainage. Engels walked these streets in 1842 and wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England out of it. The mills are flats now and the ground floors are restaurants.
Music, football and the docks
Manchester’s second economy is culture, and it is not an accident: when the mills closed in the sixties and seventies the cheap empty buildings were taken over by bands, clubs and labels, and the city has been exporting music ever since. The docks went the same way — the Ship Canal basin lay derelict for twenty years and is now the BBC. A day with the tram.
- Northern Quarter · These were textile warehouses and they emptied in the seventies, which is exactly why the quarter exists: rent was almost nothing, so record shops, rehearsal rooms and small labels moved in. The streets stand in for 1960s New York in films often enough that the production crews have a standing agreement with the council.
- Afflecks · A department store that closed in 1973 and was reopened in 1982 as an indoor market of small independent stalls — four floors of them, let by the week so anyone could try. It has been the first retail space for hundreds of Manchester businesses, and the rule has always been that chains cannot take a unit.
- Canal Street · The bars here go back to the 1960s, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence and the quarter was tolerated because it was out of sight behind the warehouses. Pride has run since 1990 and raises money for HIV charities. Sackville Gardens at the end holds the Alan Turing memorial and the national Beacon of Hope.
- Albert Hall · Built as a Wesleyan chapel in 1910, closed in 1969, and then simply sealed — the upper hall with its stained glass and organ pipes was left untouched behind a locked door for over forty years while shops traded underneath. It was rediscovered in 2012 and opened as a music venue with the chapel almost exactly as it was found.
- Old Trafford · The club was founded in 1878 by workers at the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot in Newton Heath, which is why the first shirts were green and gold. The ground was bombed in 1941 and the team played at Manchester City’s stadium for eight years. The clock on the south stand is stopped at the time of the 1958 Munich air crash.
- Imperial War Museum North · Daniel Libeskind designed it as a globe shattered into three fragments — air, earth and water — reassembled at angles that do not meet. There is almost no level floor inside and no right angles, which is deliberate and disorienting. It stands on the Salford docks, which were bombed flat in December 1940.
Getting to Manchester and getting around
- Manchester Airport · 15 kilometres south, the third busiest in Britain, and the train takes 18 minutes
- Piccadilly Station · The main station; trains to London take just over two hours
- Victoria Station · The northern station, and the 1909 tiled map of the old railway is on the wall
- Coach Station · On Chorlton Street, and the Metrolink tram is the way around the city
Cheap eats in Manchester
Manchester eats in market halls and curry houses, and both are historical rather than fashionable. The curry houses came with migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh from the 1950s, and Rusholme has about seventy restaurants in one street. The market halls came back in the 2010s after Altrincham showed that a dying covered market could be relet to small food traders and work. Local things to find: Eccles cake, Bury black pudding, and Vimto, which was invented here in 1908.
- Mackie Mayor · 10 to 18 pounds a plate, closed Monday, and busiest at weekends
- Curry Mile · 10 to 20 pounds, many are unlicensed so bring your own
- Bundobust · About 15 pounds, Indian street food and its own brewery, and all vegetarian
- Yang Sing · About 25 pounds, dim sum at lunch, and book at weekends
- Altrincham Market · 12 kilometres out on the tram, closed Monday, and no bookings
- Bury Market · Open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and it is cash in places
- Corn Exchange · 15 to 25 pounds, a dozen restaurants under a glass dome, and open late
- Eccles · The cake named after the town is flaky pastry full of currants, and it is sold everywhere
Museums in Manchester
Almost every museum in Manchester is free, and that is deliberate: the city has a long municipal tradition of public institutions paid for by the rates and open to everyone, which came out of the same Victorian civic pride that built the town hall. The collections are mostly about three things — industry, empire and the people who worked in both.
- Science and Industry Museum · Free, the engine demonstrations are at set times, and half a day
- Manchester Museum · Free, closed Monday, and the vivarium has live frogs
- Manchester Art Gallery · Free, the Pre-Raphaelites are upstairs, and two hours is enough
- Whitworth Art Gallery · Free, the 2015 extension puts the café on stilts among the trees
- Imperial War Museum North · Free, a Libeskind building with no right angles, and the hourly projection fills the hall
- National Football Museum · 14 pounds for adults, free for Manchester residents, and the 1966 ball is here
- Jewish Museum · 8 pounds, on Cheetham Hill Road, and closed Saturday
- The Lowry · Free, at Salford Quays, and the galleries are upstairs
Nightlife in Manchester
Manchester exported more popular music than any British city except Liverpool and London, and the reason is cheap space: when the mills and warehouses emptied, rehearsal rooms and clubs were almost free. Factory Records opened the Haçienda in 1982 and lost money on every drink for fifteen years because the people there were taking ecstasy instead. The building is flats now and the plaque is on the wall.
- Northern Quarter · Pints from 5 pounds, small bars in old warehouses, and most close at one
- Canal Street · The Gay Village, busiest Thursday to Sunday, and Pride is the August weekend
- Band on the Wall · Tickets from 15 pounds, and the attached bar is free to enter
- Albert Hall · Tickets from 25 pounds, a sealed 1910 chapel reopened in 2013, and the organ is still there
- Peveril of the Peak · Pints about 5 pounds, cash preferred, and no food
- Briton’s Protection · Pints about 5 pounds, 300 whiskies, and the Peterloo murals are in the back room
- Marble Arch Inn · Pints about 5 pounds, its own beer, and a 15-minute walk from Victoria
- Sinclair’s Oyster Bar · Pints about 5 pounds, very busy, and the terrace fills first
Nature and day trips near Manchester
Manchester is wet — about one hundred and forty days of rain a year, which is why the cotton industry settled here in the first place: damp air stops the thread snapping. The green comes in two kinds, the Victorian municipal parks built to give mill workers somewhere to go on a Sunday, and the Peak District, which begins about twenty kilometres east and is the most visited national park in Europe.
- Heaton Park · Free, 6 kilometres north, and the tram runs at weekends
- Fletcher Moss · Free, a botanical garden in Didsbury, and the rock garden is on a south slope
- Mayfield Park · Free, behind Piccadilly station, and it floods by design
- Hollingworth Lake · Free, 19 kilometres out, and it was dug as a reservoir for the Rochdale Canal
- Dunham Massey · 18 pounds, a deer park with about 150 fallow deer, and the house is Georgian
- Quarry Bank Mill · 20 pounds, 15 kilometres out, and the wheel runs at set times
- Chorlton · Free, and the water park behind it is a nature reserve on the Mersey flood plain
- Salford Quays · Free, the old dock basins, and the water is clean enough to swim in events
Things to do in Manchester with kids
- Science and Industry Museum · Free, the engines run on compressed air several times a day, and it is loud
- Manchester Museum · Free, a dinosaur skeleton and a live vivarium, and closed Monday
- National Football Museum · 14 pounds, and the interactive games upstairs are the half they remember
- Heaton Park · Free, boats, a farm and a working tram, and a whole day goes
- Imperial War Museum North · Free, the hourly film projects onto the whole hall, and the tower view is free
- Quarry Bank Mill · 20 pounds, the water wheel and the looms both run, and there is a river walk
- Dunham Massey · 18 pounds, deer you can walk among, and a working sawmill
- Afflecks · Free, four floors of oddities, and teenagers lose an hour in it
Holy places in Manchester
Manchester grew too fast for its churches and never got a great cathedral, so the religious buildings here are small, odd and often repurposed. What it did get was migration: Irish Catholics from the 1840s, Jewish communities from the 1850s, and Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims from the 1950s, each of which built in a city that had no established parish structure to stop them.
- Manchester Cathedral · Free, and the misericords under the choir seats are the reason to go in
- The Hidden Gem · Free, off Mulberry Street, and easy to walk past twice
- St Ann’s Church · Free, on St Ann’s Square, and the datum stone is by the door
- Jewish Museum · 8 pounds, in an 1874 Sephardi synagogue, and closed Saturday
- Salford Cathedral · Free, in Salford, and 20 minutes on foot from Deansgate
- Sackville Gardens · Free, always open, and the Beacon of Hope is in the same garden
- Victoria Baths · From 8 pounds on open days, and the dates are published monthly
- Chinatown arch · Free, a gift from China in 1987, and the New Year parade starts under it
Frequently asked questions about Manchester
What is there to see in Manchester?
The top sights in Manchester are Albert Square, Town Hall and Central Library. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Manchester?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Manchester without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Manchester?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Manchester, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The first industrial city.
How do you get to Manchester and get around?
The main ways are Manchester Airport, Piccadilly Station and Victoria Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Manchester, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Manchester that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Manchester for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.