Manchester

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Main otherTemplate:Template otherTemplate:Main other Manchester (Template:IPAc-en) 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 two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million.

The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (castra) of Mamucium or Mancunium, established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand significantly around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester attained city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, Template:Convert to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, 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 city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station. At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917, Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948, and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first graphene in 2004.

Toponymy

The name Manchester originates from , the Latin name for the city, or its variant ; its citizens are still referred to as Mancunians (Template:IPAc-en). These names are generally thought to represent a Latinised version of an older Brittonic name. It is generally accepted that the etymology of the Brittonic name is from *-, which means 'breast', in reference to a breast-shaped hill on which the city was built. However, more recent work suggests that the name could have instead come from the Brittonic *, which means 'mother', in reference to a local river goddess. Both possible roots remain extant in Celtic languages today, with meaning 'breast' in Irish but the same word meaning 'mother' in Welsh. The suffix -chester is from Old English ('Roman fortification', itself a loanword from Latin , 'fort; fortified town'), and was first use after the end of Roman rule in Britain to describe places with former links to the Roman military.

Nicknames for the city that originated from its role in the Industrial Revolution include "warehouse city" and "cottonopolis". The city is widely known as 'the capital of the North' and is part of an ongoing dispute with the city of Birmingham as to which one is to be considered the unofficial second city of the United Kingdom, although only considering population Birmingham is bigger. The city is also infrequently referred to as 'Manny', especially by non-Mancunians, which is considered offensive by some residents of the city. The phrase was particularly popularised by rapper Bugzy Malone's use of the phrase "putting Manny on the map".

Although the name Manchester only officially applies to the metropolitan borough within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, it has been informally applied to various other areas over the years; examples include the "Manchester City Zone", "Manchester post town", and the "Manchester Congestion Charge", none of which simply cover the official confines of the city.Template:Refn

History

Before 1066: Early history

The first major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England were the Brigantes; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the bank of the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. In 79 AD, following their conquest of Britain, the Roman general Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium to ensure that Roman interests in Deva Victrix (now Chester) and Eboracum (now York) were protected from the Brigantes whose land they had occupied. Central Manchester has remained a continuously populated settlement since this time.

A fragment of foundations of the final version of the Mamucium fort is visible in Castlefield today. 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. The fort was first investigated by archaeologists in 1906, and opened to the public in 1984.

1066–1800: Before industrialisation

A watercolour of mills with smoking chimneys painted from the opposite side of a river. There is a wooden dock on the left hand side with a small wooden boat by the dock, floating perpendicular to the river.

McConnel & Company's cotton mills in Ancoats, Template:Circa

After the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Anglo-Saxon settlement, the centre of the town moved to the confluence of the rivers Irwell and Irk by the Norman Conquest in 1066. In the Normans' Harrying of the North, much of the area surrounding Manchester was destroyed. The Domesday Book (1086) records Manchester as located within the hundred of Salford, as well as being held as tenant in chief by a Norman named Roger of Poitou. The town was later held by the Grelley family, who were the lords of the manor and residents of Manchester Castle before a manor house was built for them in 1215. By 1421, Thomas de la Warre had founded and constructed a collegiate church for the parish, which would later become Manchester Cathedral; other church buildings have since become Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library. The latter opened in 1653 and is still open to the public, which makes it 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 weavers, which have sometimes been credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry. Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by about 1540 had expanded to become, in the words of John Leland, "the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire". The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only prominent survivors of Manchester at the time that Leland described it.

During the English Civil War, Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentarians who were led by Oliver Cromwell. He gave the town the right to elect its own Member of Parliament; Charles Worsley was elected to the seat but only sat for a year. He was later appointed as the Major-General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major-Generals. He was a diligent puritan, who forcibly shut down ale houses operating in the town and banned the celebration of Christmas.

Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen and cotton fustians, 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, 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 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, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill. In 1803, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory in Manchester while he was a teacher in the city.

1800–1939: Industrialisation

Template:Multiple image Manchester was one of the centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. 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. This caused the rapid expansion of the town that would lead to it become as the world's first industrialised city. Manchester also became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods, because of which it was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era. Brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the unplanned urban expansion of Manchester reached "an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city from all other parts of the British Isles looking for work. The city quickly developed a wide range of industries, such that urbanist Peter Hall described the city by 1835 as "without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world". Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, before subsequently diversifying 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.

A coloured print depicting soldiers in blue and white uniforms amongst a crowd of people wearing various colours and waving unicolour flags. The people are fighting and some are on the floor.

The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 resulted in 15 deaths and several hundred injured.

A centre of industrial 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. On 16 August 1819, large crowds of working-class people protested in St Peter's Square, Manchester; estimates of the crowd range between 30,000–150,000 contemporaneously and 50,000–80,000 by modern critics. When ordered to disperse the peaceful crowd, the soldiers instead charged and attacked them on horseback, killing at least 18 and injuring more than 700. The event was given the name 'Peterloo' as a portmanteau of Peter's Square and Waterloo (after the battle).

The political landscape of early industrial Manchester contained capitalist and communist schools of thought alike. The city was the home of, and eponymous to, Manchester Liberalism, and it was also the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League after 1838. Manchester has an equally notable place in the history of left-wing politics; the city is the subject of Friedrich Engels' work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when Karl Marx visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library in the city. The economics books which Marx was reading at the time can still be seen at the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet. The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester at the Mechanics' Institute on David Street between 2–6 June 1868. Manchester was an equally important centre of the Labour Party, the Suffragette Movement, and the Chartist Movement.

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 – in 1830. Competition between the various forms of transport helped to keep costs down. The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself peaked at 108 in 1853, after which the number began to decline and Manchester had been surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton by the 1850s and Oldham by the 1860s. However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region. In 1878 the General Post Office (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.

An oil painting depicting a smog-filled wide cobbled road with pavement on either side. In the background, a bridge goes over the road in front of a towering building to the right. In the foreground, there is a man walking and a small horse and cart moving away.

An oil painting of Oxford Road, Manchester, in 1910, by Valette

1880–1939: Impacts of industrialisation

Some critics see Manchester in the late 1800s as a place rife with opportunities: there were new industrial processes being developed; the city had become known for its experimental ways of thinking, with the Manchester School promoting free trade and laissez-faire; there was the advent of new classes or groups in society and new religious sects; and the city was also experimenting with new forms of labour organisation. These factors led it to attract 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 is often dated as the last quarter of the 19th century, with many of its grand public buildings, for example Manchester Town Hall, dating from the period. The city's cosmopolitan atmosphere also 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 which gave it even greater autonomy.

Others interpret the newly industrialised Manchester as a site of widespread poverty and squalor. Historian Simon Schama 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 reported that he saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments".

The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running Template:Convert from Salford 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. Manchester began exporting its cotton to Africa as a way of paying for slaves to be purchased for the transatlantic slave trade. Manchester's relation to the slave trade and its reliance on the British Empire for its expansion forms a complex and controversial part of its history; historian Eric Williams, said it was a "tremendous dependence on the triangular trade that made Manchester" in 1944.

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; combined with increased cotton processing in other parts of the world, this led to the rapid decline of the textile industry within the city. Furthermore, industry and employment suffered greatly as a result of the Great Depression, particularly due to its effect on the value of British exports. However, Manchester also saw a cultural revolution in the 1930s as locals tried to use greater creativity and local pride to counteract the effect of the status of the economy; this included the first formation of the British High Street, and embarking on infrastructure projects such as the Manchester Central Library.

1939–1945: Second World War

An oil panting of people walking in all directions through a bleak square wearing a variety of colours but mostly all black. The square backs onto tall yellow buildings with telegraph cables stretched around. Part of a trolleybus is visible to the right-hand side.

Going to Work by L.S. Lowry, commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee in 1943

Like most of the UK, the Manchester area was mobilised extensively during the Second World War. For example, casting and machining expertise at Beyer, Peacock & Company's locomotive works in Gorton was switched to bomb making; Dunlop's rubber works in Chorlton-on-Medlock made barrage balloons; and just outside the city in Trafford Park, engineers Metropolitan-Vickers made Avro Manchester and Avro Lancaster bombers and Ford built the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines to power them. Manchester was thus the target of bombing by the Luftwaffe, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets.

The biggest air raids on the city during the war took place during the Christmas Blitz on the nights of 22–23 and 24–25 December 1940, when an estimated Template:Convert 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. Manchester Cathedral, Royal Exchange and Free Trade Hall were among the buildings seriously damaged, with the restoration of the cathedral taking 20 years. In total, 589 civilians were recorded to have died as result of enemy action within the Manchester County Borough.

1945–2000: Decline and regeneration

A photograph of a wide road from the right-hand pavement. Tall buildings tower on either side, with a white stucco building on the left and a red brick building on the right. A church tower is visible in the background in front of a church building.

Oxford Road, one of the main thoroughfares into Manchester city centre

Cotton processing and trading continued to decline 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 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'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, and (in Salford) the rebranding of the port as Salford Quays. Two bids to host the Olympic Games were part of a process to raise the international profile of the city.

A street covered in debris. On one side is a building whose side is half-destroyed, leaving only the steel frame. The road is wet and there is crime scene tap across the centre of the photo.

Corporation Street after the bombing in 1996

Manchester has a history of attacks attributed to Irish Republicans; in 1867, a group called the Manchester Martyrs were hanged following their conviction of murder after an attack on a police van in which a police officer was accidentally shot dead. The perpetrators were linked with the Irish Fenian groups that wished to free Ireland from British rule. Other instances before the 1996 attack include arson in 1920, a series of explosions in 1939, and two bombs in 1992.

On 15 June 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) set off a lorry bomb in Corporation Street 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 Template:Convert away. Although no one was killed by the explosion, it was one of the most expensive man-made disasters in history: the cost of the immediate damage was initially estimated at £50Template:Nbspmillion (equivalent to £Template:Inflation in Template:Inflation/yearTemplate:Inflation/fn), but this was quickly revised upwards. The final insurance pay-out was over £400Template:Nbspmillion (equivalent to £Template:Inflation in Template:Inflation/yearTemplate:Inflation/fn); many affected businesses never recovered from the loss of trade. However, it is also credited as helping to drive the regeneration of the city.

2000–present: Modern day

Spurred by the investment after the 1996 bombing and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, the city centre has undergone extensive regeneration. The Printworks had been closed by Robert Maxwell after he had bought it, but it was redeveloped by architects RTKL Associates following the 1996 IRA bombing and reopened as a leisure centre and cinema. The Corn Exchange was also heavily damaged in the 1996 IRA bombing, before being reopened as the Triangle Shopping Centre; it was then redeveloped by the Norwich Property Trust and opened under its current name in 2012. 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 has undergone extensive regeneration, with million-pound loft-house apartments being developed. The 47-storey, Template:Convert Beetham Tower was the tallest UK building outside of London and the highest residential accommodation in Europe when completed in 2006. It was surpassed in 2018 by the Template:Convert South Tower of the Deansgate Square project, also in Manchester. In January 2007, the independent Casino Advisory Panel licensed Manchester to build the UK's only supercasino, but plans were abandoned in February 2008.

On 22 May 2017, an Islamist terrorist carried out a suicide bombing outside the Manchester Arena, shortly after an Ariana Grande concert. The explosion killed 23 people (including the perpetrator) and injured over 800. It was the deadliest terrorist attack and first suicide bombing in Britain since the 7 July 2005 London bombings. It caused worldwide condemnation and changed the UK's threat level to "critical" for the first time since 2007. On 2 October 2025, another terrorist attack occurred outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue. A 35-year-old drove a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing worshippers. Two British men were killed, and three others were seriously injured; the assailant was shot dead by armed police. Following the terrorist attack, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood addressed growing concerns over the rise in antisemitic incidents in Manchester and across the UK, which have increased since pro-Palestinian protests and marches began taking place regularly in British cities.

Government

A grand gothic revival building as viewed from afar, with a gothic revival clock tower stretching high into the sky. Trees partially obstruct the view and the sky is clear with some clouds.

Manchester Town Hall in Albert Square, the seat of local government, is an example of Victorian-era Gothic revival architecture.

The City of Manchester is governed by the Manchester City Council. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, 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 since its inception in 1995. The town of Manchester was granted a charter by Thomas Grelley in 1301 but lost its borough status in a court case of 1359. Until the 19th century local government was largely in the hands of manorial courts, the last of which was dissolved in 1846.

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, Chorlton upon Medlock and Hulme. 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.

A fairly young man slightly smiling at the camera against green shrubbery as a background. He is wearing square glasses, a blue tie, and a grey blazer on a white shirt.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, in 2023

In 1885, Bradford, Harpurhey, Rusholme and parts of Moss Side and Withington townships became part of the City of Manchester. In 1889, the city became a county borough, as did many larger Lancashire towns, and therefore not governed by Lancashire County Council. 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, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Didsbury, Fallowfield, Levenshulme, Longsight, and Withington. In 1931, the Cheshire civil parishes of Baguley, Northenden and Northen Etchells from the south of the River Mersey were added. In 1974, by way of the Local Government Act 1972, the City of Manchester became a metropolitan district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester. That year, Ringway, the village where the Manchester Airport is located, was added to the city.

In November 2014, it was announced that Greater Manchester would receive a directly elected mayor. The mayor would have fiscal control over health, transport, housing and police in the area. Andy Burnham was elected as the first Mayor of Greater Manchester in the 2017 election with 63% of the vote. He was re-elected in the 2021 and 2024 elections. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham is responsible for ten local authorities which form the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with a budget of £2.6bn in 2024. Of this, £1.51bn is spent on policing and transport alone. The role of Mayor of Greater Manchester is the most powerful mayoral role in the country; he is the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester ex officio and is responsible for some housing, education, and welfare policies.

Geography

A map showing the boundary of the City of Manchester with the City Centre, Salford, and the airport also labelled. Almost all of the map, both inside and outside of the boundary, is shaded in grey, which denotes urban sprawl.

The City of Manchester. The land use is overwhelmingly urban.

At Template:Coord, Template:Convert northwest of London, Manchester lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by the Pennines, an upland chain that runs the length of northern England, and to the south by the Cheshire Plain. Manchester is Template:Convert north-east of Liverpool and Template:Convert north-west of Sheffield, making the city the halfway point between the two. The city centre is on the east bank of the River Irwell, near its confluences with the Rivers Medlock and Irk, and is relatively low-lying, being between Template:Convert above sea level.

The River Mersey 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 at Liverpool, the availability of waterpower from its rivers, and its nearby coal reserves.

For purposes of the Office for National Statistics, Manchester forms the most populous settlement within the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's second-largest conurbation. There is a mix of high-density urban and suburban locations. The largest open space in the city, at around Template:Convert, is Heaton Park. Manchester is contiguous on all sides with several large settlements, except for a small section along its southern boundary with Cheshire. The M60 and M56 motorways pass through Northenden and Wythenshawe respectively in the south of Manchester. Heavy rail lines enter the city from all directions, the principal destination being Manchester Piccadilly station, the city's largest railway terminus, and the second-busiest in Great Britain outside of London. Manchester lies at the centre of the North West Green Belt. This reduces urban sprawl, 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 throughout the borough, with minimal development opportunities, at Clayton Vale, Heaton Park, 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.

Climate

Template:Climate chartManchester has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb), like much of the British Isles, with warm summers and cold winters compared to other parts of the UK. Summer daytime temperatures regularly top Template:Convert, quite often reaching Template:Convert on sunny days during July and August. In more recent years, temperatures have occasionally reached over Template:Convert. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The city's average annual rainfall is Template:Convert compared to a UK average of Template:Convert. 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. The West Pennine Moors to the north-west, South Pennines to the north-east and Peak District to the east receive more snow, which can close roads leading out of the city. They include the A62 via Oldham and Standedge, the A57, Snake Pass, towards Sheffield, and the Pennine section of the M62. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Manchester was Template:Convert on 7 January 2010. The highest temperature recorded in Manchester is Template:Convert on 19 July 2022, during the 2022 European Heatwave.Template:Manchester weatherbox

Demographics

Template:Multiple image In the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of the City of Manchester was 552,000, compared to 503,100 in the 2011 United Kingdom census. This was an increase of 9.7 per cent. It was slower than the increase between 2001 and 2021 of 20.8 per cent, which was the largest in the United Kingdom outside of London. The growth was higher than the forecasted rate of growth of 5.8 per cent. In Manchester in 2021, 43.5% of people had never married, 37% of people were married, 12.24% of people were separated or divorced, and 7.26% of people were widowed. Compared to the national average for 2021, Manchester has a higher proportion of people who have never married, those who are divorced, and those who are widowed, but a lower proportion of those who are married.

According to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the population of Greater Manchester in 2021 was 2,867,769, an increase of 6.9% from 2011. Since 1991, the City of Manchester's has grown faster than other major cities in England, growing by 36.3 per cent. Salford, another city in Greater Manchester, saw the highest growth in England across the 2010s with a 15.4 per cent increase. In 2012, 6,547,000 people lived within Template:Convert of Manchester and 11,694,000 within Template:Convert of the city.

Of the increase in Greater Manchester's population between 2011 and 2021, three quarters was as a result of migration to the city. One quarter was as a result of the birth rate being higher than the mortality rate. Between the beginning of July 2011 and end of June 2012, births exceeded deaths by 4,800. Manchester and Greater Manchester have younger populations than the average for England: nationally, 82.6 per cent of people are below the age of 65. For the City of Manchester the figure is 91.2 per cent, and for Greater Manchester the figure is 85.1 per cent. Greater Manchester Combined Authority's analysis of the 2021 census noticed the rising number of 0–15 year olds was a large drive for the increasing population change within the City of Manchester.

The Manchester Larger Urban Zone, a Eurostat measure of the functional city-region approximated to local government districts, had a population of 2,539,100 in 2004. Since Brexit the UK has no longer provided data to Eurostat, and thus it does not define Manchester as a Large Urban Zone anymore. In 2024 a partial deal for GDP data was reached between the Office for National Statistics and Eurostat, but the latter's website does not mention any plans for data sharing in regards to urban population.

Religion

Template:Pie chartSince 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. 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

A Chinese arch structure on a street with a brick building to the right and no building to the left. There is a tree in the background and it is a clear early evening sky.

Manchester Chinatown's Paifang arch

An animated gif of a series of pie charts between 1971 and 2021, which show the proportion of White people decreasing from 95.8% to 48.7% and various other demographics appearing.

The ethnic demography of Manchester from 1971 to 2021

In terms of ethnic composition, the City of Manchester has the highest non-white proportion of any district in Greater Manchester. The 2021 census showed that 56.8 per cent of the population was White. 48.7 per cent were White British, 1.7 per cent White Irish, 0.1 per cent Gypsy or Irish Traveller, 6.2 per cent Other White. 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 descent alone, which represents 5.5 per cent of the population of Greater Manchester.

In 2021, 5.2 per cent were mixed race (1.8 per cent White and Black Caribbean, 1.1 per cent White and Black African, 1.1 per cent White and Asian, 1.2 per cent other mixed), 20.9 per cent Asian (2.7 per cent Indian,11.9 per cent Pakistani, 1.8 per cent Bangladeshi, 2.3 per cent Chinese, 2.2 per cent other Asian), 12 per cent Black (8.7 per cent African, 1.9 per cent Caribbean, 1.4 per cent other Black), 2.7 per cent Arab and 2.4 per cent of other ethnic heritage.

Moss Side, Longsight, Cheetham Hill, and Rusholme are population centres for ethnic minorities. Manchester's Irish Festival, including a St Patrick's Day parade, is one of Europe's largest. There is a well-established Chinatown in the city. The area attracts large numbers of Chinese students who, in attending the local universities, contribute to Manchester having the third-largest Chinese population in Europe.

Ethnicity of Manchester, from 1971 to 2021:

Ethnic group	Year
	1971 estimations		1981 estimations		1991		2001		2011		2021
	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
White: Total	512,936	95.8%	396,487	92.1%	353,685	87.4%	318,013	81%	335,109	66.6%	313,632	56.8%
White: British	–	–	–	–	–	–	292,498	74.5%	298,237	59.3%	268,572	48.7%
White: Irish	–	–	–	–	–	–	14,826	3.8%	11,843	2.4%	9,442	1.7%
White: Traveller of Irish heritage	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	509	0.1%	597	0.1%
White: Gypsy/Roma	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	883	0.2%
White: Other	–	–	–	–	–	–	10,689	2.7%	24,520	4.9%	34,138	6.2%
Asian / Asian British: Total	–	–	–	–	26,766	6.6%	41,003	10.4%	85,986	17.1%	115,109	20.9%
Asian / Asian British: Indian	–	–	–	–	4,404		5,817		11,417	2.3%	14,857	2.7%
Asian / Asian British: Pakistani	–	–	–	–	15,360	3.8%	23,104	5.9%	42,904	8.5%	65,875	11.9%
Asian / Asian British: Bangladeshi	–	–	–	–	2,000		3,654		6,437	1.3%	9,673	1.8%
Asian / Asian British: Chinese	–	–	–	–	3,103		5,126		13,539	2.7%	12,644	2.3%
Asian / Asian British: Other Asians	–	–	–	–	1,899		3,302		11,689	2.3%	12,060	2.2%
Black / Black British: Total	–	–	–	–	18,898	4.7%	17,739	4.5%	43,484	8.6%	65,893	12%
Black: African	–	–	–	–	3,465	0.9%	6,655	1.7%	25,718	5.1%	47,858	8.7%
Black: Caribbean	–	–	–	–	10,390	2.6%	9,044	2.3%	9,642	1.9%	10,472	1.9%
Black: Other Blacks	–	–	–	–	5,043		2,040		8,124	1.6%	7,563	1.4%
Mixed / British Mixed	–	–	–	–	–	–	12,673	3.2%	23,161	4.6%	29,026	5.2%
White and Black Caribbean	–	–	–	–	–	–	5,295		8,877	1.8%	9,987	1.8%
White and Black African	–	–	–	–	–	–	2,412		4,397	0.9%	5,992	1.1%
White and Asian	–	–	–	–	–	–	2,459		4,791	1%	6,149	1.1%
Any other mixed background	–	–	–	–	–	–	2,507		5,096	1%	6,898	1.2%
Other: Total	–	–	–	–	5,517	1.4%	3,391	0.9%	15,387	3.1%	28,278	5.1%
Other: Arab	–	–	–	–	5,517	1.4%	3,391	0.9%	9,503	1.9%	15,028	2.7%
Other: Any other ethnic group	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	5,884	1.2%	13,250	2.4%
Ethnic minority	22,484	4.2%	33,944	7.9%	51,181	12.6%	74,806	19%	168,018	33.4%	238,306	43.2%
Total:	535,420	100%	430,431	100%	404,866	100%	392,819	100%	503,127	100%	551,938	100%

Ethnicity of school pupils

Ethnic group	School year
	2004/2005		2021/2022
	Number	%	Number	%
White: Total	34,860	64%	34,609	37.6%
White: British	33,698	61.9%	29,591	32.2%
White: Irish	373		320	0.3%
White: Traveller of Irish heritage	106		87	0.1%
White: Gypsy/Roma	23		286	0.3%
White: Other	658		4,325	4.7%
Asian / Asian British: Total	8,893	16.3%	23,594	25.9%
Asian / Asian British: Indian	770		2,163	2.4%
Asian / Asian British: Pakistani	6,204		15,838	17.3%
Asian / Asian British: Bangladeshi	971		2,157	2.4%
Asian / Asian British: Chinese	390		1,073	1.2%
Asian / Asian British: Other Asians	558		2,363	2.6%
Black / Black British: Total	4,700	8.6%	15,699	17.1%
Black: Caribbean	1,517		1,324	1.4%
Black: African	2,618		11,014	12.0%
Black: Other Blacks	564		3,361	3.7%
Mixed / British Mixed	3,530	6.5%	8,808	9.5%
Other: Total	1,690	3.1%	7,448	8.1%
Unclassified	793	1.5%	1,628	1.8%
Total:	54,470	100%	91,786	100%

Economy

GVA for Manchester
2012–2022

Year	GVA (£ mn)	GVA Growth
2012	£17,373	Increase 4.7%
2013	£17,828	Increase 2.6%
2014	£18,406	Increase 3.2%
2015	£19,348	Increase 5.1%
2016	£20,589	Increase 6.4%
2017	£22,669	Increase 10.1%
2018	£23,476	Increase 3.6%
2019	£25,281	Increase 7.7%
2020	£24,782	Decrease -2.0%
2021	£27,504	Increase 11.0%
2022	£31,506	Increase 14.6%

An aerial image of a city at night. There are five skyscrapers in the foreground and the photo is misty with tall hills and low-lying clouds in the background. The lights of the rest of the city can be seen in the background but not the buildings.

The Great Jackson Street skyscraper district under construction in Central Manchester

Macroeconomic wealth

The Office for National Statistics does not produce economic data for the City of Manchester alone; instead it groups the city with Salford, Stockport, Tameside, and Trafford in an area named Greater Manchester South. In 2023, the area had a GVA of £34.8Template:Nbspbillion. The economy grew relatively strongly between 2002 and 2012, when growth was 2.3 per cent above the national average.

It is ranked as a Beta– (beta minus) city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network in their 2024 rankings, placing it second for UK cities behind London, which is A++ (the highest ranking). Below Manchester are Bristol and Birmingham in the Gamma category. 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 decade between 2015 and 2025 saw the economy of the United Kingdom significantly affected by the country's withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) and by the COVID-19 pandemic. These events impacted Manchester, with estimates showing a decline in economic output from COVID in the region of 9-10 percent, and with only 1 per cent of firms in the city reporting a positive impact from Brexit, with 60 per cent reporting a neutral or negative impact. The years since 2021 have seen some recovery, with forecasts for 2025-28 suggesting that growth in the region will reach 2.4 per cent annually, exceeding the expected national growth rate of 1.6 per cent.

Individual wealth

Manchester is a city of contrast, where some of the country's most deprived and most affluent neighbourhoods can be found. As of the 2019 Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Manchester is the second most deprived local authority by rank, the sixth by score, and fifth by the proportion of Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LLSOAs) that are deprived, with 43% of its LLOAs falling among the top 10% of areas nationally by the extent of deprivation. By final ranking it is only beaten by Blackpool, which is also in Lancashire. As of the 2021 census, 53.5% of the over-16 population is in employment, 5.7% are unemployed while actively seeking work, and 40.8% are economically inactive.

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 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.

Business wealth

An aerial photo of five glass and steel skyscrapers at the centre of a city with a large urban sprawl stretching the entire background. The sky is cloudy with the sunset creating an orange hue reflected by the buildings' glass exteriors.

Deansgate Square, whose tallest building is the tallest in the UK outside of London

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'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 and Amsterdam, which all have a cost-of-living index of less than 95.

Manchester has the largest UK office market outside London, according to GVA Grimley, with a quarterly office uptake (averaged over 2010–2014) of some Template:Convert – equivalent to the quarterly office uptake of Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle combined and Template:Convert more than the nearest rival, Birmingham. The strong office market in Manchester has been partly attributed to "northshoring" (from offshoring), 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.

Architecture

A red brick and terracotta building that sits on a corner of a square junction. The corner of the building is slightly rounded into an octagon-like shape with it then stretching above the building to become a clock tower.

Neo-baroque Lancaster House. Manchester is known for opulent warehouses from the city's textile trade.

Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to contemporary architecture. The widespread use of red brick 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 cotton mills, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure, while many have been redeveloped as apartment buildings and office space. Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square, was built in the Gothic revival style.

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, a restaurant and apartments. The largest skyscraper is now Deansgate Square South Tower, at Template:Cvt.The Green Building, opposite Oxford Road station, is a eco-friendly housing project, while the recently completed One Angel Square, is one of the most sustainable large buildings in the world.

Landmarks

Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser, Oliver Heywood, William Gladstone and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Duke of Wellington. The cenotaph in St Peter's Square is Manchester's main memorial to its war dead. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, it echoes the original on Whitehall in London. The Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A larger-than-life statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square (having stood for many years in Platt Fields) was presented to the city by Mr and Mrs Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the part Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865.

Adjacent to Manchester Airport is the Runway Visitor Park, an aviation centre which is the site of G-BOAC, one of the twenty Concorde aircraft built. The aircraft was the flagship of British Airways' fleet because BOAC was the initials of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Other aircraft on display at the park, which also has a view of Manchester Airport's runways, are a BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4, a Hawker Siddeley Trident, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, and a British Aerospace 146.

Heaton Park in the north of the city borough is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, covering Template:Convert of parkland. The city has 135 parks, gardens, and open spaces. 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.

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, which was the first inter-city passenger railway in the world. The station opened with the railway in 1830 and closed in 1975. The station buildings are still extant, and since 1983 they have been part of the site of the Science & Industry Museum.

An aerial photo of a modern railway terminus station viewed from the top end a short distance away. The multiple parallel roofs of the trainshed stretch into the background against a grey sky.

Manchester Piccadilly railway station, the busiest of the four major railway stations in the Manchester station group, with over 32Template:Nbspmillion passengers using the station in 2019/20

Two of the city's four main line terminus stations did not survive the 1960s: Manchester Central, originally part of the Cheshire Lines Committee, and Manchester Exchange, originally part of the London and North Western Railway, both closed to passengers in 1969. Manchester Mayfield station closed to passenger services in 1960, before being redeveloped as a parcel depot which opened in 1970 and closed in 1986. In August 2025, Manchester City Council approved the regeneration of Mayfield Park, which includes the station, into a housing estate.

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, with two mainline stations: Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. The Manchester station group – comprising Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria, Manchester Oxford Road and Deansgate – is the third busiest in the UK, with 44.9Template:Nbspmillion passengers recorded in 2017/2018. The High Speed 2 link to Birmingham and London was also planned, which would have included a Template:Convert tunnel under Manchester on the final approach into an upgraded Piccadilly station, however this was cancelled by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October 2023.

Recent improvements in Manchester as part of the Northern Hub in the 2010s have been numerous electrification schemes into and through Manchester, redevelopment of Victoria station and construction of the Ordsall Chord 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, 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

Two yellow trams sit besides one another on parallel tracks, with the one on the left slightly closer to the camera which is on the ground in the road. Both have their pantographs up which are touching contact wires. On either side there are people walking on the pavement.

Manchester Metrolink is the largest tram system in the UK, with a total route length of Template:Convert.

Manchester became the first city in the UK to acquire a modern light rail tram system when the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. In 2023–2024, 42Template:Nbspmillion 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

File:SCM 2 66075.jpg

Free buses operate on two routes around Manchester city centre.

The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London. Before the launch of Bee Network, there were over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester region radiating from the city. In 2011, 80 per cent of public transport journeys in Greater Manchester were made by bus, amounting to 220Template:Nbspmillion passenger journeys each year. After deregulation 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 and Stagecoach Manchester. 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 Manchester Metroshuttle, which carries 2.8Template:Nbspmillion commuters a year around Manchester's business districts. Stagecoach Manchester is the Stagecoach Group's largest subsidiary and also the largest bus operator in Greater Manchester, operating around 690 buses.

Air

An aerial view of a large airport; from left to right there are two parallel runways and then a series of terminal buildings around a central flat area. In the foreground the airport backs onto urban sprawl but in the background it meets fields.

Manchester Airport from above

Manchester 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, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than any other airport in Britain). It is the only airport in the UK outside London to have two fully-operational runways.

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. From September 2010 the airport became one of only 17 airports in the world and one of only three UK airports alongside Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport to operate the Airbus A380.

A smaller Manchester Barton Aerodrome exists Template:Convert to the west of Manchester city centre. It was Manchester's first municipal airport and became the site of the first air traffic control tower in the UK, and the first municipal airfield in the UK to be licensed by the Air Ministry. Today, private charter flights and general aviation 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 passes through Manchester including the Ashton Canal, Rochdale Canal and Bridgewater Canal - all of which end in Manchester city centre. The canals are still maintained, though now largely repurposed for leisure use. The Manchester Ship Canal, which was built to carry freight from the Industrial Revolution onward, ends in neighbouring Salford before linking with the River Irwell which runs through the north of the city.

Cycling

Cycling for transportation and leisure enjoys popularity in Manchester and the city also plays a major role in British cycle racing. Manchester has a history of cycling, and is one of the seven cities to have a Rapha store alongside New York City, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo and Osaka. As of 2023, 2% of journeys in Manchester are made by bicycle, with cycle routes being integrated into Manchester's multimodal Bee Network alongside walking, train, tram, and bus routes.

Culture

Music

Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include Van der Graaf Generator, Oasis, the Smiths, Joy Division and its successor group New Order, Buzzcocks, the Stone Roses, the Fall, the Durutti Column, 10cc, Godley & Creme, the Verve, Elbow, Doves, the Charlatans, M People, the 1975, Simply Red, Blossoms, Take That, Dutch Uncles, Everything Everything, the Courteeners, Pale Waves, 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, Inspiral Carpets, and James. The later groups came from what became known as the "Madchester" scene that also centred on The Haçienda nightclub developed by the founder of Factory Records, Tony Wilson. Although from southern England, the Chemical Brothers subsequently formed in Manchester. Former Smiths frontman Morrissey, whose lyrics often refer to Manchester, later found international success as a solo artist. Previously, notable Manchester acts of the 1960s include the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and Davy Jones of the Monkees, and the earlier Bee Gees, who grew up in Chorlton. Prominent rap artists from Manchester include Bugzy Malone, Aitch, and Meekz.

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

A glass and steel building on the left of a photograph, as viewed from the bottom of a large set of outdoor stairs leading up to it. The view of the building is partially obscured by lamp posts and the stairs are split up by steel railings

The Manchester Arena, the city's premier indoor multi-use venue and one of the largest purpose-built arenas in Europe

Manchester's main pop music venue is Manchester Arena, voted "International Venue of the Year" in 2007. With over 21,000 seats, it is the second largest arena of its type in Europe. In terms of concertgoers, Template:As of it is the busiest indoor arena in the world, ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York and The O2 Arena in London, which are second and third busiest. Other venues include Manchester Apollo, Albert Hall, Victoria Warehouse, Manchester Academy and the Co-op Live arena, the latter being the largest indoor arena in the UK by capacity, and the third largest in the world. Smaller venues include the Band on the Wall, the Night and Day Café, the Ruby Lounge, The Deaf Institute, and Gorilla. Manchester also has the most indie and rock music events outside London.

Manchester has two symphony orchestras, The Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, and a chamber orchestra, 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, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr. Manchester is a centre for musical education: the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham's School of Music. Forerunners of the RNCM were the Northern School of Music (founded 1920) and 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, (1859–1932), who later had the music library at the famed Peabody Institute conservatory of music in Baltimore, 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.

Performing arts

A palladian square building as viewed from its corner. Outside the front of the building is a large pedestrianised square which is quite busy with people. The back right corner of the building continues above the rest of the flat roof to become a conical tower.

The Royal Exchange, whose eponymous theatre is the largest of its kind in the UK

Manchester is a significant cultural centre for theatre and the performing arts, with a number of large venues. Significant theatres include: the Manchester Opera House, which feature large-scale touring shows and West End productions; the Palace Theatre, which despite near-closure in the 1970s is now one of the most successful in the country; and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester's former cotton exchange, which is the largest theatre in the round 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 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, a biennial international arts festival with a focus on original work, which has included major new commissions by artists, including Bjork. In 2023, the festival, operated by Factory International, was given a permanent home in Aviva Studios, a purpose-built multi-million pound venue designed by Rem Koolhaas from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Museums and galleries

A night-time aerial photograph of some streets in a large city that stretches the entire image. The centre of the photograph shows a wide road with buildings either side, and about halfway down there is a disused station building with tracks coming out which join the various other railway viaducts in the background.

The Science and Industry Museum (middle right) as viewed from above

Manchester's museums celebrate Manchester's Roman history, rich industrial heritage and its role in the Industrial Revolution, the textile industry, the Trade Union movement, women's suffrage and football. A reconstructed part of the Roman fort of Mamucium is open to the public in Castlefield.

A triangular prism shaped glass building as photographed from a short distance away, with trees lined in front.

The National Football Museum

The Science and Industry Museum, housed in the former Liverpool Road railway station, has a large collection of steam locomotives, industrial machinery, aircraft and a replica of the world's first stored computer program (known as the Manchester Baby). 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 and natural history collections. Other exhibition spaces and museums in Manchester include Islington Mill in Salford, the National Football Museum at Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, the Manchester Costume Gallery at Platt Fields Park, the People's History Museum and the Manchester Jewish Museum.

A neopalladian cuboid building as viewed centred on its corner from across the street. Halfway down the facade is a portico, and there is a central cuboid atrium that rises in the centre of the roof above the main roof height. There are regularly arranged sash windows in two stories.

Manchester Art Gallery

The municipally owned Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street houses a permanent collection of European painting and one of Britain's main collections of Pre-Raphaelite 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. The work of Stretford-born painter L. S. Lowry, known for "matchstick" paintings of industrial Manchester and Salford, can be seen in the City and Whitworth Manchester galleries, and at the Lowry art centre in Salford Quays (in the neighbouring borough of Salford), which devotes a large permanent exhibition to his works.

Literature

A small stucco building with sash windows. It is a cube shape with a slightly slanted roof and two stories, as photographed from the ground in front. Trees are seen on either side of the building.

Gaskell House, where Mrs Gaskell wrote most of her novels. The house is now a museum.

Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature 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's novel Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848), and Letitia Landon's poetical illustration Manchester to a vista over the city by G. Pickering in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, which records the rapid growth of the city and its cultural importance.

The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was a study of the city by Friedrich Engels, which he wrote while living and working here. Manchester was also the meeting place of Engels and Karl Marx, where the two began writing The Communist Manifesto in Chetham's Library – founded in 1653 and claiming to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Elsewhere in the city, the John Rylands Library 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.

The novel Hard Times is reputed to have been set in Manchester and Preston by Charles Dickens. Similarly, the novel Jane Eyre was first written by Charlotte Brontë in 1846, while she was staying in her lodgings in Hulme, an area of the city. 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.

Elizabeth Gaskell penned all her novels but Mary Barton at her home in 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester. Her house would often host influential authors of the time, such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Eliot Norton. It has been open to the public as a literary museum since 2014. Isabella Banks was also born in the city; she is most well known for her 1876 novel The Manchester Man. Anglo-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in the city's Cheetham Hill district in 1849. Anthony Burgess is among the 20th-century writers who lived in Manchester. During his time in the city he wrote the dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange in 1962. Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, moved to the city in 1996 and lives in West Didsbury, a village contiguous within the city.

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 250,000 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 £100Template:Nbspmillion, and supports 12,000 jobs. In 2024, Manchester was voted the 8th best city in the world for nightlife, with voters praising its variety and inclusivity for different tastes and backgrounds.

The Madchester scene of the 1980s, from which groups including the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, 808 State, James and the Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as The Haçienda. The period was the subject of the movie 24 Hour Party People. 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.

A canal as photographed from a bridge over it. On the left hand side there is a brick industrial building that is in shadow; on the right hand side there are brick buildings with many windows facing over the canal, which us lined by brick wall.

Canal Street, the centre of Manchester's gay village

Gay village

Public houses 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 1985, when it was backed by newly elected councillors on Manchester City Council. Despite its high attendance, Manchester Pride has also received criticism from within the LGBT community dating as far back as 2007, due to its choice around where it spends the revenue it earns.

Canal Street is now described as the centre of Manchester's gay village, and the surrounding area has been described as the most successful of its kind in Europe. However, critics of the area have also described it as a "gay ghetto" and that its general popularity has led to a decreased focus on LGBTQ rights and inclusion itself.

Education

Schooling

A black and white pencil drawing of some stone and brick buildings forming a small complex from a short distance away. The buildings each have a door and some windows, with children in the courtyard in front.

The original building of Manchester Grammar School

One of Manchester's notable secondary schools is Manchester Grammar School, established in 1515. Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music. There are three other secondary schools in the city: William Hulme's Grammar School, Withington Girls' School, and Manchester High School for Girls.

In 2019, the Manchester Local Education Authority (LEA) 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) 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: Manchester High School for Girls, The King David High School, Manchester Islamic High School for Girls, and Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys.

Higher education

There are three universities in the City of Manchester: the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music. There are also two other universities in the wider Manchester region, the University of Salford, and the University of Greater Manchester (formerly the University of Bolton). The total student population of these five institutions exceed 100,000. Manchester is also the location of the Royal Northern College of Music, a conservatoire and performance venue.

The University of Manchester is the second largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, and was created in 2004 through the merger of Victoria University of Manchester (founded 1904) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (founded 1956); the idea of a joint university had developed from the Mechanics' Institute, founded in 1824. The University of Manchester also includes the Manchester Business School, which offered the first Master of Business Administration course in the UK in 1965.

According to the Complete University Guide, the University of Manchester ranks at number 28 in the United Kingdom, Manchester Metropolitan University ranks at 50, and the University of Greater Manchester comes 102 out of 130 universities. The Guardian University Guide ranks the three as 31, 57, and 32 respectively; The Times Good University Guide ranks them as 27, 119, and 46 respectively. The University of Manchester is also one of the 24 universities that form the Russell Group, having been a founding member in 1994. The university has been the site of a number of important scientific developments. Ernest Rutherford led a team which first discovered the nuclear atom and inaugurated the beginnings of nuclear physics in 1919; Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first Stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, in 1948; and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene in 2004.

Manchester Metropolitan University 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, 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.

Sport

A football stadium as viewed from one corner. The photograph is a fish-eye paorama taken during a game against a blue sky. The stadium is full of fans on all four sides of the pitch, with large stands stretching up below an arched roof.

The Etihad Stadium is home to Premier League club Manchester City F.C. and host stadium for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Two Premier League football clubs bear the city's name – Manchester City and Manchester United. Manchester City's home is the City of Manchester Stadium in east Manchester, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and then reconfigured as a football ground in 2003. Manchester United, despite originating in Manchester, have been based in the neighbouring borough of Trafford since 1910. Their stadium Old Trafford is adjacent to Lancashire County Cricket Club ground, also called Old Trafford. The cricket club has strong association with Manchester due to proximity to the city and Manchester historically being part of Lancashire.

Sporting facilities built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games include the City of Manchester Stadium, National Squash Centre and Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials, and is the home of British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling. 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 for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The Manchester Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester hosted the 2008 World Squash Championships, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship, the 2013 Ashes series, the 2013 Rugby League World Cup, the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the 2019 Ashes series, and the 2019 Cricket World Cup.

Media

Print

An art deco glass and steel building that is largely built from cuboids joined together, some of which have rounded corners. The photograph is taken on a sunny day from across the street.

The 1930s Art Deco Express Building on Great Ancoats Street, a remnant of Britain's "second Fleet Street"

The Guardian 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, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Sun. At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, earning the city the nickname "second Fleet Street". In the 1980s the titles closed their northern offices and centred their operations in London.

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, which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West, much in the same vein as the Yorkshire Post does for Yorkshire or The Northern Echo does for the North East; it folded in October 2006.

The main regional newspaper in the city is the Manchester Evening News, 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.

Television

A glass and steel building that is a cuboid shape with a perpendicular single-storey extension sticking out towards the camera. The side of this extension closest to the camera is decorated with leaves and has a white sign that read "GRANADA / TV"

Granada Studios, the former headquarters of Granada Television

Manchester has been a centre of television broadcasting since the 1950s, with a number of television studios that have been in operation around the city. The ITV franchise Granada Television has been based in Manchester since 1954. Now based at MediaCityUK, the company's former headquarters at Granada Studios on Quay Street with its distinctive illuminated sign were a prominent landmark on the Manchester skyline for several decades. Granada produces Coronation Street, 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". The Manchester television channel, Channel M, owned by the Guardian Media Group operated from 2000, but closed in 2012. Manchester is also covered by an internet television channel called Manchester TV.

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 studio outside London, Dickenson Road Studios, in a converted Methodist chapel in Rusholme. The first edition of Top of the Pops was broadcast here on New Year's Day 1964. From 1975, BBC programmes including Mastermind, and Real Story, 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. Manchester was the regional base for BBC One North West Region programmes before it relocated to MediaCityUK in nearby Salford Quays.

Radio

As of 2016, Manchester has 10 licensed radio stations, which is the joint-fourth highest in the UK; the city is beaten only by London, Glasgow, and Birmingham, and ties with Cardiff and Edinburgh. Local radio stations include BBC Radio Manchester, Hits Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, Heart North West, Smooth North West, Gold, Radio X and NMFM (North Manchester FM).

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 (Wythenshawe FM 97.2). Defunct radio stations include Sunset 102, which became Kiss 102, then Galaxy Manchester, and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (later Imagine FM). Pirate radio played a significant role in the city's alternative rock culture during the 1960s and 1970s, as it allowed young people to listen to broadcasts that fell outside of the cultural standard.

International relations

Manchester is home to the largest group of consulates 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.

Twin towns – sister cities

Manchester is twinned with:

• Template:Flagicon Chemnitz, Germany (1983)
• Template:Flagicon Wuhan, China (1986)

Greater Manchester is twinned with Osaka, Japan since 2025 and also cooperates with numerous other cities.

Friendship agreements

In addition to its twin towns, Manchester has friendly relations with: Template:Div col

• Template:Flagicon Aalborg, Denmark
• Template:Flagicon Aarhus, Denmark
• Template:Flagicon Córdoba, Spain
• Template:Flagicon Faisalabad, Pakistan (1997)
• Template:Flagicon Gumi, South Korea
• Template:Flagicon Haidian (Beijing), China
• Template:Flagicon Kagoshima, Japan
• Template:Flagicon Los Angeles, United States (2009)
• Template:Flagicon Rehovot, Israel

See also

• List of Freemen of the City of Manchester
• Manchester dialect

External links

• Manchester City Council
• Official tourist board