Manchester does not ask you to like it. It assumes you will, eventually, and if you do not, that is your business. The city was the engine of the Industrial Revolution — Cottonopolis, the first industrial city in the world, the place where the modern urban experience was invented. The red-brick mills and canals are still there, repurposed into apartments and galleries and bars. The rain is there too. It rains more in Manchester than in any other major English city. The Mancunians do not mention it. They wear coats and get on with things.
The Northern Quarter and the City Centre
The Northern Quarter is the creative heart of the city: independent record shops, vintage clothing stores, street art on every available wall, and coffee that costs £3 and is excellent. Afflecks, an indoor market of independent stalls spread across several floors of a former department store, has been a Manchester institution since 1982. The John Rylands Library on Deansgate is a neo-Gothic masterpiece built in 1900. The reading room — the stained glass, the vaulted ceiling, the statues of theologians and philosophers — is one of the most beautiful interiors in England. The Manchester Art Gallery on Mosley Street holds the best collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings outside London. Free entry.
Football: Old Trafford and the Etihad
Manchester is the only English city with two clubs that have won the Champions League. Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United since 1910, seats 74,000 and runs stadium tours daily (£28). The museum traces the club from its formation as Newton Heath in 1878 through the Munich air disaster of 1958 and the treble of 1999. The Etihad Stadium, home to Manchester City since 2003, seats 53,000 and also runs tours (£25). The City Football Academy next door, the training facility that has produced Phil Foden and others, is visible from the stadium tour. The two stadiums are 6 km apart. The rivalry is real and it is permanent and on derby day the city splits in two.
Music: From the Hacienda to the AO Arena
The Hacienda, the nightclub that defined the Madchester scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, is gone. A block of flats called The Hacienda now stands on the site. A plaque marks where the dance floor used to be. The legacy — Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths, the Stone Roses, Oasis — is embedded in the city. The Salford Lads Club, the red-brick building on the cover of the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead, still stands. The mural of the band inside is a pilgrimage site. The AO Arena, the largest indoor arena in Europe at 21,000 capacity, hosts the headline tours. The smaller venues — the Deaf Institute, Band on the Wall, Gorilla — are where the next band is playing. Manchester’s music scene is not a museum. It is still happening.
What is your Manchester — the music, the football, the Northern Quarter on a rainy Tuesday — and when did it win you over?
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