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United Kingdom

6 city guides · Europe

Cities in United Kingdom (6)

Europe
🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Bath

Bath (population 100,000 — the only city in the United Kingdom to be entirely designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1987): the entire historic city, including the surrounding hills and the rural setting of the Avon valley, is protected as the most complete example of Georgian urban design in the world) is one of the most beautiful and most historically significant small cities in England: the Roman baths (the most completely preserved Roman religious and bathing complex in Northern Europe — the Temple of Sulis Minerva and the Great Bath (the lead-lined pool that has been filled by the same geothermal spring (the Aquae Sulis — the only naturally hot spring in Great Britain) since the Romans built it in 70 CE)), the Georgian architecture (the Royal Crescent — the 30-house curved terrace designed by John Wood the Younger (1767–1775) — the most perfect example of Georgian domestic architecture in the world: the 158m long, 30-bay crescent of Bath stone houses set in a sweeping lawn in perfect proportion: "the most splendid curve of Georgian architecture in Britain"), the Circus (the 33-house circular terrace designed by John Wood the Elder (begun 1754) — the circular street of houses in three equal arcs: the architectural complement to the Royal Crescent), the Pulteney Bridge (the 1774 Robert Adam bridge over the Avon — one of only four bridges in the world with shops on both sides of the full span (the others are the Rialto in Venice, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt)), and the Bath Abbey (the Perpendicular Gothic church (1499) known as the "Lantern of the West" for the 52 windows that make it one of the most glass-filled Gothic buildings in England). Bath was the most fashionable spa destination in 18th-century England: the city where Jane Austen set Northanger Abbey (1803) and Persuasion (1817) (Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806), where the dandy Beau Nash presided over the social life of the Assembly Rooms for 50 years, and where the entire English aristocracy and gentry came to "take the waters" at the thermal baths (the belief that the mineral-rich geothermal water cured everything from gout to infertility).

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Birmingham

Birmingham (population 1.1 million city, 2.9 million metropolitan area — the second-largest city in the United Kingdom and the largest city in England outside London) is the city that industrialized the world: the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution (the Lunar Society of Birmingham (1765–1813) — the most important intellectual society in British history: the fortnightly dinner meetings of James Watt (the inventor of the steam engine — the most important single invention in human history), Matthew Boulton (the manufacturer who commercialized Watt's steam engine at the Soho Manufactory — the first modern factory), Joseph Priestley (the discoverer of oxygen (1774)), Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's grandfather and the first scientist to propose the theory of evolution), Josiah Wedgwood (the master potter and the inventor of mass production in ceramics) and twelve other members who between them transformed the way the world manufactures, thinks and organizes society), the city that coined the word "million" for a new kind of wealth (the Birmingham industrialists were the first to become millionaires in the modern sense), and now one of the most ethnically diverse and culinarily exciting cities in Europe (the city with the most Michelin-starred restaurants per capita outside London, the largest concentration of Balti restaurants in the world (the "Balti Triangle" — the 50+ Balti restaurants of Sparkbrook, Moseley and Balsall Heath where the Balti (the Urdu/Punjabi steel wok curry) was invented by the Pakistani restaurant owners of Birmingham in the 1970s) and the biggest St Patrick's Day parade outside Dublin and New York).

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Bristol

Bristol (population 470,000 city, 700,000 metropolitan area: the largest city in the southwest of England and the most important historic port city on the Avon river) is one of the most culturally vibrant, the most architecturally remarkable and the most independently minded cities in the United Kingdom. The city was the most important English slave trade port (the second-largest slave trading port in Britain after London: between 1698 and 1807 when the slave trade was abolished, Bristol ships made approximately 2,100 slave trade voyages carrying approximately 500,000 enslaved Africans across the Atlantic — the most controversial and the most important chapter in Bristol's commercial history: the wealth generated by the slave trade funded the most important civic buildings in Bristol including the Colston Hall (renamed "Bristol Beacon" in 2020 after the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in June 2020 — the most important act of public monument removal in recent British history)). Bristol is the birthplace of Banksy (the most internationally recognized anonymous street artist in the world — the Banksy works in Bristol are the most important collection of Banksy's in situ works anywhere: the "Mild Mild West" teddy bear, the "Well Hung Lover" and the "Season's Greetings" are the most visited street art works in Bristol).

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Gibraltar

Gibraltar (population 33,000 — "The Rock" colloquially, "Jebel Tariq" in Arabic: the most precisely "Mountain of Tariq" Arabic-origin single Gibraltar place name — the most precisely Tariq-ibn-Ziyad-711-CE-Umayyad-landing single Gibraltar historical name origin) is the most precisely British-Overseas-Territory single geographically-tiny and the most historically strategically-significant single Mediterranean Sea-Atlantic-Ocean-junction point. The Rock of Gibraltar (the most precisely Upper Rock Nature Reserve single 426-metre-limestone-rock: the most comprehensively one-of-the-Pillars-of-Hercules single ancient geographic boundary), the Barbary macaques (the most precisely only-wild-primate-in-Europe single Gibraltar macaque population: the most precisely 300+ individual and the most precisely multiple-troop single Gibraltar macaque colony — the most superstitious single British military tradition: legend states if the macaques leave Gibraltar will cease to be British), the Great Siege Tunnels (the most precisely 1779-1783-Great-Siege single Napoleonic-era-equivalent British fortification tunnel), the Strait of Gibraltar (the most precisely 14-kilometre-minimum-width single Atlantic-Mediterranean junction strait). Gibraltar is uniquely the most precisely British-Spanish-Moroccan-culture-combining single 6.7-square-kilometre territory in the world.

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London

London (population 9.7 million Greater London; 14+ million metropolitan area) is the capital of the United Kingdom and the largest city in Western Europe — a city on the Thames Estuary that has been continuously inhabited for 2,000 years since the Romans founded Londinium in 43 CE. London is simultaneously the world's leading financial centre (the City of London — the 'Square Mile'), the most-visited city in the world (21+ million international visitors/year), and a city of extraordinary cultural density: the British Museum (8 million artifacts; the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, the Lewis Chessmen), the National Gallery (the finest collection of pre-20th-century European painting in any single building), the Tate Modern (the world's most-visited modern art museum), the V&A, the Natural History Museum, and dozens more are all free. Westminster (the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace), the City of London (St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, the Gherkin), and East London (Brick Lane, Shoreditch, the Barbican) represent three utterly different faces of the same city. The London transport system (the Tube — opened January 10, 1863; the world's first underground railway) covers 402km of track across 11 lines and 272 stations. The Thames (the 'liquid history' in Winston Churchill's phrase) divides the city into north (the historic, museum-dense north bank) and south (the Tate Modern, the Shard, Brixton). Three days cannot contain London — but they can capture its essential character. Best months: May–September (though London is worth visiting any month).

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Oxford

Oxford is one of the world's oldest and most influential universities cities, home to the University of Oxford — the oldest university in the English-speaking world, founded (in various forms) in the 1090s and certainly teaching in its current form from 1167. The 38 colleges that make up the university are not centrally located on a campus but distributed through the medieval city centre — Balliol (founded 1263), Merton (1264), Exeter, Christ Church, Magdalen, New College, All Souls, Trinity and Keble are all within walking distance of the central Carfax Tower and each has its own chapel, hall, library and gardens. The physical result is extraordinary: an entire medieval city that is simultaneously a working university — students in gowns crossing cobbled lanes between buildings that have changed little since the 14th century. Oxford also has two extraordinary museums available free of charge: the Ashmolean (the world's first university museum, founded 1683, with the original Guy Fawkes lantern, the Alfred Jewel and Raphael paintings) and the Pitt Rivers Museum (Victorian anthropological collection in glass cases, including the shrunken heads that schoolchildren find simultaneously horrifying and enthralling). Oxford's other claim on world culture is J.R.R. Tolkien (Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke and Merton, wrote The Lord of the Rings in Oxford), C.S. Lewis (Magdalen College, wrote Narnia in Oxford and met the Inklings at The Eagle and Child pub), Lewis Carroll (wrote Alice in Wonderland for the daughter of the Christ Church dean), Inspector Morse (the fictional detective whose pub scenes are filmed at Oxford pubs) and the Harry Potter series (Bodleian Library and Christ Church Hall were filming locations).

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