Liverpool grew from a fishing creek granted a charter by King John in 1207 into the port that handled 40% of world trade. Three days trace the medieval street plan, the wealth built on enslaved people, and the wartime scars still visible today.
King John's 1207 charter laid out seven streets still traceable today — Castle, Dale, Chapel, Water, Tithebarn, High and Old Hall. The castle stood on Derby Square from c.1235 until demolition in 1726; a plaque and the Victoria Monument mark it. Free, open access.
Liverpool's parish church since 1257, on the site of a 13th-century chapel to St Mary del Quay. The tower collapsed in 1810 killing 25 people, mostly girls from the charity school; the Blitz gutted it in 1940. Rebuilt 1952. Free entry, open 08:00–17:00.
A Tudor timber-framed manor begun in 1530 by the Norris family, with priest holes and an eavesdrop hole built for Catholic recusants under Elizabeth I. The Great Hall retains 16th-century oak panelling. National Trust; adult around £16, gardens included.
The Calder Stones are six Neolithic sandstone megaliths carved with spirals and cup-and-ring marks around 3000 BC — Liverpool's oldest human artefacts, older than Stonehenge's sarsens. Now displayed in a glasshouse in Calderstones Park. Free.
Housed in Hartley's 1846 warehouse, covering emigration (9 million people sailed from Liverpool 1830–1930), the Titanic — registered here to the White Star Line — and the Lusitania, sunk 1915. Free entry, open 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
Unveiled 1930, Lionel Budden's bronze reliefs break with heroic convention — one frieze shows ranks of ordinary soldiers, the other mourners at graves. It names no generals. Grade I listed, one of Britain's finest war memorials. Free, open plateau.
The bunker beneath Derby House from where the Battle of the Atlantic was directed 1941–45, with 7ft concrete roof and the original Map Room intact. Around 300 staff, mostly Wrens, plotted convoys here. Adult roughly £16.50; open 10:30–16:30.
Gutted by an incendiary bomb on 5 May 1941 during the May Blitz that killed some 4,000 people across Merseyside and left 70,000 homeless. The shell was deliberately left roofless as a memorial. Free to enter the garden.
Built from 1783 for merchants grown rich on Atlantic trade, this Grade II listed terrace was Gladstone's birthplace (No. 62, 1809). St Andrew's churchyard holds the pyramid tomb of William Mackenzie, buried in 1851 seated at a card table. Free to walk.
Europe's oldest Chinese community, established in the 1860s when the Blue Funnel Line began direct Liverpool–Shanghai sailings. The ceremonial paifang arch, erected 2000, is the largest outside China at 15m with 200 dragons. Free.
A former sandstone quarry converted into a garden cemetery in 1829, holding 57,000 burials including Kitty Wilkinson, who opened the first public wash-house during the 1832 cholera epidemic. The 1829 Greek Revival Oratory is free when open.
The 1901 Tobacco Warehouse was the world's largest brick building — 27 million bricks, 14 storeys, 1.6 million sq ft. Stanley Dock's 1848 Hartley warehouses and the flight of four locks link the docks to the Leeds–Liverpool Canal.