Liverpool holds more national museums than anywhere outside London and more listed buildings than any UK city bar the capital. This route runs from Walker Art Gallery Rembrandts to Tate Liverpool's contemporary rooms, two cathedrals a half-mile apart, and the artist-run spaces of the Baltic Triangle.
Free national gallery on William Brown Street, open 10:00–17:00 (Tue–Sun). Holds Rembrandt's 'Self Portrait as a Young Man', Hockney's 'Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool', and one of Britain's strongest Pre-Raphaelite rooms with Millais's 'Isabella'. Ticketed exhibitions £8–12.
Harvey Lonsdale Elmes's 1854 neoclassical hall, called the finest Greek Revival building in Europe by Pevsner. The Minton tiled floor — 30,000 tiles — is uncovered only a few weeks a year. Free entry to the Great Hall and Heritage Centre; concert hall tours run most days.
Tate's northern outpost, showing the national collection of modern and contemporary art. While the Albert Dock building is under redevelopment the programme runs from RIBA North on Mann Island, with rotating displays and architecture exhibitions in the glass 'Liverpool telescope' building.
Peter Ellis's 1864 Oriel Chambers on Water Street is the world's first metal-framed glass curtain-walled building — mocked at the time, later credited by Chicago School architects. Walk on to India Buildings, Martins Bank and Castle Street's Victorian banking palaces.
Giles Gilbert Scott's Anglican cathedral, begun 1904 and finished 1978 — the largest cathedral in Britain and the longest in the world. The Tower Experience lifts you 500 feet above the Mersey; it also holds the highest and heaviest ringing peal of bells anywhere.
Frederick Gibberd's 1967 circular Catholic cathedral, known locally as Paddy's Wigwam. John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens's stained-glass lantern throws blue, red and yellow light across the whole nave. Lutyens's vast unbuilt crypt survives underneath.
The 1939 Art Deco home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the UK's oldest surviving professional orchestra (founded 1840). Grade II* listed, with a rising Walturdaw cinema screen and a 1,700-seat auditorium. Backstage tours run on selected dates.
Rebuilt in 2014 and winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize, with 105 aluminium sunshades carrying portraits of Liverpool residents. The original 1964 house launched Julie Walters, Bill Nighy and Pete Postlethwaite; the basement Bistro has fed theatre-goers since 1970.
William Lever's 1922 gallery in his model workers' village across the Mersey, holding the finest Pre-Raphaelite collection in Britain alongside Wedgwood jasperware and Chinese famille rose porcelain. Free; open 10:00–17:00. Twenty minutes by Merseyrail to Bebington.
Former warehouse district now holding Camp and Furnace, Baltic Creative studios and Constellations. Jubilee Drive and Greenland Street carry large-scale murals from Liverpool's Contrast festival; independent galleries and print studios occupy the ground floors.
Britain's oldest arts centre, in a 1717 Queen Anne building on School Lane — the oldest surviving building in central Liverpool. Free contemporary exhibitions, artist studios upstairs, a garden courtyard, and a programme of live art and poetry that predates the Tate by 250 years.
The Rice Street pub where John Lennon drank as an art student at the neighbouring Liverpool College of Art, and where the Dissenters art group met in 1957. Original 1860s snugs, real ale, no music — the Georgian quarter's working local rather than a tourist stop.