On the road

SIGHTS

National Cycling Centre (see cycling)

Town Hall

Built: 19th century.
Style: Neo-Gothic.
Features: this is the headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses various local government bodies. To the north of the Town Hall lies Albert Square and to the south St Peter’s Square, where the Manchester Cenotaph stands, facing the building’s southern entrance. Completed by architect Alfred Waterhouse in 1877, the building features imposing murals by artist Ford Madox Brown depicting significant events in the city’s history. The entrance and the Sculpture Hall contain busts and statues of notable figures such as Dalton, Joule and Barbirolli. The exterior of the building is dominated by the clock tower, which stands 85 metres tall and houses a bell known as Great Abel. In 1938, an extension was built, connected to the original building by two covered walkways.
Note: the building and Albert Square have been closed for renovation since 2018 and were due to reopen completely in spring 2027.
Listing: Grade I since 1952.

Manchester Cenotaph

Date built: 1924.
History: this is a war memorial situated in St Peter’s Square, opposite the Town Hall. The project, launched in 1922, was entrusted to Sir Edwin Lutyens, who produced a variation on his design for the London Cenotaph. The memorial consists of a central cenotaph and a Stone of Remembrance flanked by two twin obelisks, characteristic of Lutyens’s work. It is crowned by the effigy of a soldier who fell in battle and adorned with reliefs depicting the Imperial Crown, the coat of arms of Manchester and inscriptions commemorating the dead. The memorial was unveiled on 12 July 1924 by the Earl of Derby, assisted by Mrs Bingle, a local resident whose three sons had perished during the war. In 2014, Manchester City Council dismantled the memorial and rebuilt it on the north-east corner of St Peter’s Square, next to Manchester Town Hall.
Listed: Grade II in 1952.

Old Trafford

Built: 1909. Architect:Archibald Leitch.
Capacity: 74,310 spectators.
History: built in 1909, it has been the home of Manchester United since 1910. During the Second World War, the stadium was destroyed by German bombing raids. Manchester United were then forced to share Manchester City’s former ground, Maine Road, with their rivals. Nicknamed the “Theatre of Dreams” by Sir Bobby Charlton, it is England’s third-largest stadium in terms of seating capacity, behind Wembley and Twickenham, with a capacity of 74,000 spectators. International matches, including those from the 1966 FIFA World Cup – which England won on home soil – and the 1996 UEFA European Championship, have been held at Old Trafford. The stadium also hosts rugby league matches and concerts.
Distinguishing features: a statue of former manager Sir Matt Busby stands above the department store. There is also a plaque in memory of the victims of the Munich air disaster on the southern edge of the East Stand. In 2008, a statue known as The United Trinity, depicting George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, was unveiled to mark the fortieth anniversary of Manchester United’s first European Cup victory. On 23 November 2012, a statue of Sir Alex Ferguson, Man Utd’s legendary manager, was erected near the entrance to the stand named after him.

Manchester Cathedral

Construction: 15th to 20th centuries.
History:Manchester Cathedral is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, the seat of the Bishop of Manchester and the city’s parish church. It is situated on Victoria Street in Manchester city centre. The former parish church was rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style in the years following the foundation of the collegiate chapter in 1421. Then, at the end of the 15th century, James Stanley II (prior from 1485 to 1506, then Bishop of Ely from 1506 to 1515) oversaw the reconstruction of the nave and the collegiate choir, which were fitted with tall windows. He also commissioned the late medieval wooden interior furnishings, notably the lectern, the choir stalls and the nave vaulting supported by angels holding gilded instruments. The collegiate church became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Manchester in 1847. It was extensively renovated, restored and extended during the Victorian era, and again following damage caused by bombing during the Second World War.
Listing: Grade I listed.

Manchester Art Galleries

Opened: 1824.
History and features: the museum occupies three buildings, the oldest of which is listed. It was originally the Royal Manchester Institution, whose building was designed by Sir Charles Barry in 1824. The museum was extended in 2002 to incorporate the former Manchester Athenaeum building, in the Palladian style, also designed by Barry in 1826. It houses many works specifically linked to Manchester, particularly in the eponymous gallery.
Collections: the combined collection of the Manchester Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume comprises over 14,000 objects from the fine arts, decorative arts and costume. The fine arts collection contains 14,000 works of art, including 2,000 paintings, 350 sculptures, drawings, watercolours, prints and photographs. It notably includes works by Constable, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Gauguin, Renoir and 17th-century Flemish masters. The decorative arts are represented by 13,000 objects in ceramics, glass and other materials. Finally, the Gallery of Costume holds 21,000 items of clothing and accessories.
Listing: Grade I listed since 1952.

Whitworth Building

Built: 1902.
Style: Neo-Gothic.
History: the building was constructed between 1895 and 1902 by architect Paul Waterhouse in the Neo-Gothic style. It was opened in 1902 by the future King George V and his wife, the future Queen Mary. It forms part of the University of Manchester and is named after industrialist Joseph Whitworth, who bequeathed part of his fortune for the construction of public facilities in Manchester. This money was also used to build the adjacent Christie Library. The main hall of Whitworth Hall can accommodate nearly 700 people for public meetings.
Listing: Grade II listed since 1963.

Manchester Museum

Opened: 1835.
The Manchester Museum is part of the University of Manchester. Situated on Oxford Road (A34) in the heart of the campus’s neo-Gothic buildings, it houses around 6 million objects from all over the world and is a key resource for teaching and research, as well as being a public museum.
Collections: its natural history collections include 900,000 beetle specimens, a T. Rex skeleton, American frogs, Indian butterflies, Pacific birds, European plants and minerals, and armour and artefacts from ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean, the Americas and Oceania.
Listing: Grade II listed.

Midland Hotel

Opened: 1903
Style: Edwardian Baroque.
History: this grand hotel was completed in 1903 on behalf of the Midland Railway, the railway company that operated services to Manchester Central Station from St Pancras Station in London. It overlooks St Peter’s Square. The hotel was designed by architect Charles Trubshaw in the Edwardian Baroque style. In the year it opened, the hotel is said to have welcomed 70,000 guests. It housed a 1,000-seat theatre, and a chamber orchestra used to play on its open-air roof terrace.
Trivia: legend has it that Adolf Hitler, an architecture enthusiast, dreamt of making the Midland Hotel the headquarters of the Nazi Party in England. This is said to be the reason why the hotel and its surroundings were spared from German bombing raids during the Second World War. It was also at the Midland that Charles Rolls and Henry Royce are said to have decided to join forces to create a car-making company. Finally, the Beatles were refused entry to the hotel’s famous French restaurant for “inappropriate attire”. The hotel has been bought and restored several times in the 21st century.
Features: famous for its red brick, terracotta and granite structure, materials chosen for their resistance to pollution. The hotel comprises 312 rooms and 14 suites, a fitness centre and two restaurants: The French, one of the UK’s first Michelin-starred restaurants, and the Mount Street Dining Room & Bar.
Listing: Grade II.

The Triangle or Corn Exchange

Construction: 1903, 2000 and 2015.
Style: originally Baroque.
Features: the Corn Exchange is a former covered market and shopping centre that has been converted into a food court. Originally, the building served as a grain exchange and was formerly known as the Corn & Produce Exchange, then The Triangle. Following an IRA bomb attack in Manchester city centre in 1996, it was renovated and converted into a shopping centre until 2014. The building was sold to investors and refurbished to house a number of restaurants and cafés.
Listing: Grade II listed.

Beetham Tower

Construction: 21st century.
Features:Beetham Tower is a skyscraper in Manchester. Built between 2004 and 2006, it is 168 metres tall and has 48 storeys. The building is named after its developers, the Beetham Organisation. It was designed by architect Ian Simpson and built by Carillion. It is also known as the Hilton Manchester, after the hotel which occupies the first 23 floors
Distinguishing feature: this tower is notable for producing a loud noise in strong winds – an effect not anticipated by the architect during the design phase.

SIGHTS

Sheffield Winter Garden

Opened: 2003
History and features:Sheffield Winter Garden is one of the largest temperate greenhouses built in the UK over the last hundred years. It is the largest urban greenhouse in Europe. It is home to over 2,000 plants from all over the world. Designed by Pringle Richards Sharratt and Buro Happold, it was opened in May 2003 by Queen Elizabeth II. It measures approximately 70-metres long and 21-metres high. The building is frost-protected and is one of the largest glulam structures in the UK. The timber used is larch, a sustainable wood that reduces the use of solvents and avoids the use of chemicals harmful to plants. The building is equipped with a smart building management system that controls the fans and air vents to keep the plants cool in summer and warm in winter.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens

Opened: 1836.
History: The Sheffield Botanical and Horticultural Society, founded in 1833, raised funds the following year to purchase 73,000 m² of agricultural land belonging to a local tobacco merchant. The gardens were designed by Robert Marnock and opened on 29 June 1836: 12,000 people visited the gardens when they opened in the summer of 1836.

The Sheffield Town Trust took over the management of the gardens at the end of the 19th century and abolished the admission charge; since then, entry has remained free.

Features: the pavilions and greenhouses, designed by Benjamin Broomhead Taylor, which were restored and reopened in 2003, are the most striking features of the gardens. Other notable structures include the main entrance gate, the south entrance lodge and a bear pit housing an 8' tall steel statue of an American black bear named Robert the Bear. The gardens are home to the national collection of Sarcococca, Weigela and the closely related Diervilla shrubs.
Trivia: to attract visitors to the gardens following their opening, hot-air balloon flights were organised. The first took place on 3 October 1837, when Margaret Graham ascended into the air and dropped a monkey fitted with a parachute, which landed safely on the ground.
Listing: Grade II listed

Kelham Island Museum

Opened: 1982.
History:Sheffield played a leading role in the Industrial Revolution and has celebrated this heritage at the Kelham Island Museum, where the artefacts that brought fame and wealth to the ‘City of Steel’ are on display. The island on which the museum stands was created in the 12th century by the construction of a millrace that diverted water from the River Don to power a mill. It is named after a 17th-century miller, Kellam Homer. The site was subsequently occupied by the Crowley foundry from 1829 to 1890, followed by a power station and warehouses. These are the premises now occupied by the museum. The museum suffered extensive damage during the Sheffield floods of July 2007, with over a metre of water inside the buildings, causing £1.5 million worth of damage. It has since been fully restored.
Features: the museum houses exhibitions on science and industry in Sheffield, including reconstructions of craft workshops and the largest intact Bessemer converter in England. The museum organises school visits as well as demonstrations of the 1905 Don River engine, a 12,000-horsepower (9 MW) steam engine that originally powered an armour plate rolling mill. Among other things, it was used to roll steel for nuclear reactors. The museum also houses the prototype of the Sheffield-Simplex car, one of only three surviving examples. The museum possesses extensive photographic archives. From 2009 to 2021, the museum housed a cutler’s workshop where the cutler gave demonstrations of his craft.

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet

Built: 18th century.
History: The Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is a unique, listed industrial site dating from the 18th century. Originally known as Abbeydale Works, this site was once a centre for the manufacture of agricultural tools and the largest water-powered industrial site on the River Sheaf. The factory’s main products were agricultural scythes, but other cutting tools were also manufactured there, such as grass hooks and hay knives.
Features: visitors can explore the manager’s house and the workers’ cottages, water wheels, workshops, tilting hammers, a grinding vat, a steam engine and the last remaining full-crucible steel furnace in the United Kingdom.
Listing: Grade I and Grade II listed buildings.

Millennium Gallery

Opened: 2011.
History: opened in 2001, the gallery houses over 13,000 objects linked to the industrial past of the ‘City of Steel’. The building is mainly constructed of concrete and glass, with a series of galleries extending from a central atrium. In 2011, the gallery was ranked the 15th most visited free attraction in the country by Visit England.
Collections: the gallery houses two permanent collections and two temporary exhibition spaces. The most prestigious is the collection assembled by Victorian scholar John Ruskin in 1875 at St George’s Museum in Walkley (Sheffield), which he hoped would inspire Sheffield’s working class. It comprises watercolours, drawings, engravings, plaster casts, minerals, illustrated books, manuscripts and coins. The gallery housing the collection was refurbished in 2011 to allow for a more frequent rotation of items from the collection. The Sheffield Metalwork Collection comprises over 13,000 catalogued items; it includes the largest existing collection of cutlery, tableware (forks and spoons) and hollowware (bowls, teapots, vessels) made in Sheffield, and was assembled to showcase local craftsmanship. The temporary exhibition spaces are dedicated to design and the fine arts.
Trivia:Marcel Proust, an admirer of Ruskin and his translator into French, wrote of his collection: ‘His catalogue is like a compendium of all the arts and all the sciences. One finds photographs of paintings by the masters alongside collections of minerals, just as in Goethe’s house.’

Weston Park Museum

Opened: 1875
History: the museum opened in 1875 at Weston House, whose grounds later became the park. A neoclassical extension was added in 1887. The Mappin Art Gallery was built to house the collection of works bequeathed by businessman John Newton Mappin. Weston Hall was demolished in the 1930s and rebuilt in 1937. In December 1940, the Mappin Art Gallery was severely damaged during the Sheffield Blitz and did not reopen until 1965. Both buildings closed in March 2003 for a complete refurbishment and reopened in October 2006 as Weston Park Museum following the merger of the two buildings. Further restoration work also took place in 2016. Weston Park Museum welcomes around 250,000 visitors a year and was nominated for the prestigious Gulbenkian Prize in 2007. In 2008, the museum won The Guardian’s ‘Family-Friendly Museums’ award.
Collections: the museum has seven galleries: the Royle Gallery; Lives and Times of Sheffield; Beneath Your Feet; Ancient Egypt; What On Earth!; Stories of Sheffield and Depicting Sheffield.
Distinguishing feature: the museum houses one of the country’s oldest weather stations, which has been providing weather data for Sheffield since 1882.
Listing: Grade II listed.

Town Hall

Construction: late 19th century.
History: Queen Victoria opened the Town Hall on 21 May 1897, seven years after construction began in 1890 under architect Edward William Mountford. The building marked a period of economic prosperity in Sheffield, the capital of the steel industry.

Features: It is a six-storey stone building with Renaissance elements and a 64-metre clock tower crowned by a statue of Vulcan. The structure dominates the city centre with its ornate façade and decorative details. The building features friezes depicting Sheffield’s industries and houses a public collection of silverware reflecting the region’s manufacturing heritage. These works of art tell the story of the economic power that once defined the city.
Notable feature: the belfry was fitted with an electronic bell system in 2002, which chimes every hour in the city centre. This system allows the historic mechanism to operate with precision whilst marking the rhythm of daily life in the city.
Note: the building is open for guided tours and events, with cultural activities scheduled regularly. Visitors can explore the public areas and enjoy the views from the clock tower when tours are available.
Listing: Grade II listed.

Sheffield Cathedral

Construction: 1200 to 1966.
History: the cathedral site has a long history linked to Christianity. The shaft of the Sheffield Cross (9th century), which is said to have once stood on this site, is held at the British Museum. The first parish church was probably built in the 12th century by William de Lovetot, at the opposite end of the town from Sheffield Castle. It was destroyed by fire in 1266 during the Second Barons’ War against King Henry III. Another church was completed in 1280 but was demolished and then rebuilt around 1430. Shrewsbury Chapel was added in the following century and a sacristy (now St Catherine’s Chapel) was built in 1777. A major restoration was completed in 1880. In 1914, the church was designated the cathedral of the newly created Diocese of Sheffield. Plans were drawn up by Charles Nicholson to extend it, but due to the Second World War, these were scaled back. These additions give the church an unusual floor plan but provide it with an impressive south façade.

Features: the east wall of the sanctuary incorporates stones from the 13th-century church. The sanctuary and choir date from the 15th century. The cruciform church of that period also included galleries and a chapel, traces of which can be seen on the walls. The choir roof probably dates from the 16th century. The Shrewsbury Chapel was built to house the funerary monuments of the Earls of Shrewsbury from the Tudor period. Several members of the family are buried in the crypt. During restoration work in 2013, it was discovered that several of these coffins had disappeared. In the 1900s, Sir Charles Nicholson’s plan envisaged a radical realignment of the church’s axis by 90 degrees, but it was never completed.
Distinguishing features: the cathedral has been damaged by fire on two occasions in modern times. In 1979, the fire broke out in the bell tower and then spread to the rest of the building. Despite significant damage, the structure was not seriously affected. In 2020, in the midst of the Covid crisis, another arson attack started in a room used for charitable work. A 40-year-old woman was arrested.
Listing: Grade I listed.

Crucible Theatre

Opened: 1971

History: The Crucible Theatre was built by MJ Gleeson between 1969 and 1971. It was completed in two years, in time for the opening performance, which featured brass bands, children’s entertainment and Anton Chekhov’s The Swan Song. This production was intended to demonstrate the versatility of the stage, which is suited not only to dance and concerts but also to classical and modern theatre. It can seat 980 spectators and hosts touring productions, as well as the World Snooker Championship since 1977.