Leeds in 3 days

Henry Moore Institute (The Headrow, Leeds — directly adjacent to Leeds Art Gallery (the two are connected by internal passage); the international centre for the study of sculpture in all periods and media; named after Henry Moore (1898–1986 — the sculptor born in Castleford, West Yorkshire (25km east of Leeds); the most internationally famous British sculptor of the 20th century; his large-scale abstract-figurative bronze sculptures are in public spaces from New York to Paris to the UNESCO Garden in Paris)): the exhibitions (the Henry Moore Institute does not have a permanent collection of Henry Moore's works (those are held at the Hepworth Wakefield (25km south) and the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire); instead the Institute runs temporary exhibitions of historical and contemporary sculpture, with a particular emphasis on underrepresented sculptors and periods (the 19th century, the inter-war period, and the Global South)). Free.

Leeds Art Gallery (The Headrow; the main municipal art museum of Leeds (free, open daily); the collection: (1) the Victorian painting collection (the finest strength of the Leeds gallery: particularly the paintings of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893 — the Leeds-born painter of nocturnal cityscapes; Grimshaw's moonlit paintings of rain-slicked Victorian streets (the reflected gaslight in puddles, the wet cobblestones, the gas-lit shop fronts) have made him one of the most reproduced Victorian painters; his subject matter was explicitly local — Leeds, Scarborough, the Thames; the style (photographically detailed, atmospheric, sentimental) was considered bourgeois in his lifetime but is now recognised as a unique contribution to Victorian visual culture)); (2) the early 20th-century British collection (Stanley Spencer (the Cookham (Berkshire) painter of Biblical scenes in an English village setting; his 'The Resurrection, Cookham' (1924–1927) is at the Tate Modern)); (3) the sculpture gallery (the ground floor displays rotating sculpture from the collections of the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds City Museum, and the Art Gallery). Free.

Headingley (the inner-northwest suburb of Leeds (3km from the city centre by the 1/1A bus (£2.40 Arriva Yorkshire bus) or a 35-min walk along the canal)); the Headingley Cricket Ground (Emerald Headingley Stadium — the home ground of Yorkshire County Cricket Club (the most successful county cricket club in England by number of County Championships); the ground also hosts Test cricket (England international matches): one of 7 England Test match venues; the ground capacity: 17,000; the famous 1981 Ashes Test (the Miracle of Headingley: England followed on against Australia, reduced to 135–7 in their second innings, requiring 227 more runs to avoid innings defeat; Ian Botham (the Yorkshire-born all-rounder) then scored 149 not out and Bob Willis took 8–43 to give England an 18-run victory — one of the greatest Test match reversals in history)); the Headingley neighbourhood (the student and young professional area of Leeds: independent coffee shops, second-hand record shops, and the best pub crawl in Leeds outside the city centre). Free (ground exterior free; match tickets £30–60).

Yorkshire beer culture (Yorkshire is the home of the British real ale revival: CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) was founded in 1971 specifically in response to the industrialisation of British beer brewing (the merger of the regional breweries into the 'Big Six' (the six major British brewery groups that between 1960 and 1980 eliminated the majority of British traditional ales) and the replacement of traditional cask-conditioned ale (real ale) with keg beers); the Yorkshire 'pint' (the Tetley's Bitter — the Leeds-brewed Yorkshire bitter (3.8% ABV; produced from 1823 in the Tetley's Brewery in Hunslet (2.5km south of the city centre) until 2011 when production moved to Wolverhampton; the Tetley's pub chain survives as a pub brand)); the Leeds craft beer scene (the second wave: the Craft beer explosion of 2015–2025 in Leeds: Northern Monk Brewery (Holbeck — the most critically acclaimed brewery in Yorkshire; their New World IPA (5.4% ABV; dry-hopped with Citra and Mosaic) is consistently rated one of the finest IPAs brewed in the UK)); the Whitelock's Ale House (Turk's Head Yard — the oldest pub in Leeds (established 1715); listed on CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors). Pint: £4.50–6.

Harewood House (Harewood, 11km north of Leeds on the A61 Harrogate road; accessible by the 36 bus from Leeds City Bus Station (£3 return, 35 min); the most complete surviving 18th-century country house in Yorkshire): the house (built 1759–1771 for the Lascelles family (the Lascelles fortune came from the Caribbean sugar trade and the enslavement of African people on Barbados plantations; the family's wealth from slavery is documented and publicly acknowledged in the current Harewood House educational programme)); the architecture (designed by John Carr and Robert Adam (the greatest interior designer of 18th-century Britain; Adam's Harewood interiors (the Library, the Yellow Drawing Room, the Music Room) are among his finest surviving work: the delicate plasterwork (made by Joseph Rose the Elder), the fitted Chippendale furniture (Thomas Chippendale the Elder was commissioned by the Lascelles family to furnish the house — the Harewood Chippendale collection is the largest surviving commission of the cabinet-maker's work: over 200 pieces))); Capability Brown designed the landscape garden (500 acres; the terrace garden; the lake). Adults £20.

Trinity Leeds (the 2013 flagship shopping centre in the heart of Leeds city centre — covering the site of the former Coronet Cinema and the old Albion Street market (the market site was one of the first to receive planning permission under the 1990 Leeds Development Corporation master plan); the external glazed roof over the central atrium (by the architects Benoy, London: a 5,000m² freespan glass and steel roof; when opened it was the largest freespan glass roof in any UK shopping centre)). The Victoria Quarter (Briggate/King Edward Street — the 1898–1903 Victorian shopping arcade (the most architecturally elaborate surviving Victorian shopping arcade in England outside the Burlington Arcade in London): the Frank Matcham-designed stained glass canopy (Frank Matcham (1854–1920) was the most prolific theatre and arcade architect in Victorian Britain; his Leeds Victoria Quarter canopy (coloured glass, wrought iron, and gilded ornamental metalwork) was described by Pevsner as 'one of the supreme Victorian commercial interiors' in the Yorkshire volume of the Buildings of England series); Harvey Nichols (the Leeds Victoria Quarter store is the only Harvey Nichols store outside London (opened 1996)). Free.

Leeds South Bank (the largest urban regeneration project currently underway in the UK outside London (the South Bank masterplan covers 136 hectares of former industrial land south of the River Aire): the developments so far: the Southbank (the pedestrianised canalside path from the Dark Arches at Granary Wharf east to the Royal Armouries); the Candle House and Round Foundry (the converted Victorian foundry buildings of the Holbeck Urban Village (the most complete early industrial landscape in Leeds — the Marshall, Benyons and Bage Mill (1797 — the first multi-storey iron-framed fireproof mill in the world (the first building in history to use an iron skeleton frame as the primary structural system; a direct ancestor of the modern skyscraper); grade I listed but currently empty and at risk))); the Aire Park (the new park on the Aire riverside currently under construction)). Free to walk.

Leeds dining final night: the call of Café Élite (the Leeds-institution French-influenced brasserie): the great Yorkshire food finale — a Yorkshire cheese board (the Yorkshire Dales produce some of the finest British cheeses: Wensleydale (the cheese named after the Yorkshire dale (Wensleydale — the valley of the River Ure in the northern Dales); a crumbly, slightly sweet, moist, white cow's milk cheese; traditionally made from ewes' milk until the 1920s; the most famous food product from the Yorkshire Dales (made famous to a new generation by the animated film Wallace & Gromit in which Wallace's absolute passion for Wensleydale cheese is a running plot device)); Harrogate Blue (a mild English blue cheese with a creamy texture and a modest blue-green veining, made in the Harrogate area of North Yorkshire; similar to Italian Gorgonzola Dolce in texture but with a gentler flavour)); a final pint of Northern Monk IPA at the Whitelock's 1715 ale house (the oldest pub in Leeds). From £20.