Birmingham keeps its best things behind no ticket barrier at all: free canal towpaths longer than Venice's, a Victorian library with a rooftop secret garden, Burne-Jones glass in a free cathedral, and Bull Ring stalls still selling fruit by the £1 bowl.
Europe's largest public library, opened 2013. Ride the free lifts to the Level 7 Secret Garden terrace and the Level 9 Shakespeare Memorial Room, an 1882 panelled room rebuilt inside the roof. Mon-Fri 09:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-16:00.
Thomas Archer's 1715 baroque cathedral holds four Edward Burne-Jones stained glass windows made by Morris & Co, at their best in mid-morning light. Entry is free with a suggested £3 donation, and the churchyard has benches for a packed lunch.
Contemporary art inside a Gothic 1877 board school on Oozells Square. Free entry, no ticket or booking, Wednesday to Sunday 11:00-17:00. Two floors of changing exhibitions plus a bookshop and the Yorks cafe with filter coffee around £3.50.
Birmingham has more canal miles than Venice. Walk the free towpath from the moored narrowboats at Gas Street Basin past the 1874 Roundhouse and Ladywood locks to the Soho Loop. Step-free the whole way and open 24 hours.
Three markets side by side below St Martin's: the Indoor Market's fishmongers and butchers, the Rag Market's clothing stalls on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, and the Open Market where fruit and veg still sell in £1 bowls. Closed Sundays.
Birmingham's Chinatown clusters around Hurst Street and the Arcadian Centre. Chung Ying and Tai Wu serve weekday dim sum from roughly £4.50 a basket, and the bakeries along Hurst Street sell BBQ pork buns and egg tarts for under £2 to take away.
The Alcester Road strip four miles south: independent delis, a monthly farmers' market on the village green (last Saturday, 09:00-13:00) with £2 samosas and cut-price bread, plus charity shops stocking one of the city's wealthier suburbs' cast-offs.
A real ale pub with more than 20 hand pumps listed live on screens above the bar. It serves no food at all and instead invites drinkers to carry in a takeaway from the surrounding streets — plates, cutlery and menus provided free at the bar.
524 acres of Worcestershire hills handed to the city in 1904. Climb to the Beacon Hill toposcope for a view over ten counties towards the Malverns and the Welsh borders. Bus 62 from the city centre takes about 50 minutes; the park never closes.
Eighty acres of Victorian parkland along the River Rea with a boating lake, bandstand and formal beds, free year-round. The Midlands Arts Centre inside has free galleries, clean toilets and a canteen where soup and bread runs around £5.
Tolkien's boyhood watermill on the River Cole, the model for the mill at Hobbiton, sits ten minutes' walk from Moseley Bog, the tangled nature reserve that became the Old Forest. Mill entry is about £5.50; the bog boardwalks cost nothing.
An 1827 canal-feeder reservoir with a 1.75-mile perimeter path, twenty minutes on foot from Broad Street. The western bank frames the sun setting behind the city skyline and the BT Tower — the cheapest big view Birmingham has.