Leeds keeps two histories in one city: monastic Yorkshire in the Aire valley, and the wool-and-steam boomtown that followed. This route runs Kirkstall Abbey and a Tudor mansion into workhouse wards, mill floors and the world's oldest working railway.
Cistercian monastery founded in 1152 and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, leaving one of Britain's most complete abbey ruins. Nave walls, chapter house and cloister still stand near full height. Grounds open daily, dawn to dusk.
The abbey's medieval gatehouse, converted into a museum of three recreated Victorian streets — chemist, pawnbroker, printer — fitted out with salvaged Leeds shopfronts and stock. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-17:00.
Tudor-Jacobean mansion where Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was born in 1545. Around forty rooms hold Chippendale furniture and Leeds silver, set in 1,500 acres of Capability Brown parkland.
Rebuilt in 1841 by Dr Walter Hook to win back the industrial poor. Inside stands the Leeds Cross, a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon shaft carved with Weland the Smith, discovered inside the walls of the demolished tower.
Housed in the 1861 Leeds Union Workhouse. You take the identity of a slum resident in a recreated 1842 Leeds street and find out whether you survive, then face a surgery ward operating without anaesthetic. Daily 10:00-17:00.
Cuthbert Brodrick's 1858 civic palace, opened by Queen Victoria and crowned by a 225ft clock tower guarded by four stone lions. Its basement held cells and a courtroom that stayed in use until the 1990s.
Once the largest woollen mill in the world, rebuilt in fireproof stone in 1805 after fire destroyed it. Spinning mules, steam locomotives, tailoring machines and a working 1920s cinema fill the sheds on a canal island.
Henry Charles Fehr's bronze figures of Peace and St George, unveiled in 1922 and moved to the Headrow steps in 1937. Nearby stands his 1903 Black Prince, a monument to a knight with no connection to Leeds at all.
Titus Salt's 1853 model village, now UNESCO-listed: stone workers' terraces graded by rank, an Italianate church, no pub by design. The vast mill floors now hold a permanent David Hockney collection. Trains from Leeds take 20 minutes.
Founded in 1768 and the oldest surviving subscription library in Britain, with Joseph Priestley as an early secretary. The 1808 Commercial Street rooms keep their gas-lit galleries, spiral stairs and original ledgers of borrowers.
Authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1758, making it the world's oldest continuously working railway, built to haul coal to Leeds and first to run commercial steam locomotives in 1812. Volunteer-run steam services from Moor Road.
Licensed since 1715 in a yard off Briggate, it kept its 1880s refit: copper-topped bar, tiled counter front, etched mirrors and gas lamps. John Betjeman called it the very heart of Leeds after drinking here.