Manchester walking tours

The Visitor Centre has details of the city’s manywalking tours , including a street art tour of the Northern Quarter (from around £7). There’s also a 3hr pay-what-you-can walking tour that leaves from the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Gardens.

South of St Peter’s Square, on Lower Mosley Street, stands Britain’s finest concert hall, Bridgewater Hall, balanced on shock-absorbing springs to guarantee the clarity of the sound. The apartment block at the corner of Lower Mosley Street and Whitworth Street West bears the name of the site’s previous occupant, the infamous Hacienda Club, the spiritual home of Factory Records, an independent label that defined a generation of music through such bands as Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays before closing down in 1997. Across the road on Tony Wilson Place is Manchester’s glitzy new cultural hub, HOME, a merger between Manchester heavyweights Cornerhouse and the former Library Theatre Company. It comprises two theatres, five cinema screens, gallery space, and production and broadcast facilities. Each of the three floors has a low-key bar or restaurant with additional outdoor seating for when the sun shines. Turn left along Whitworth Street West and you’ll spot the string of café-bars and restaurants that have been shoehorned along the Rochdale canal’s Deansgate Locks, a pattern repeated along and across the street in the old railway arches abutting Deansgate Station. Look up and you’ll see the striking Beetham Tower, easily the tallest skyscraper in Manchester and home to a glitzy hotel. This area is fantastic to explore by foot.

Just west of Deansgate Station, the tangle of railway viaducts and canals that lie sandwiched between Water Street, Liverpool Road and Deansgate make up pocket-sized Castlefield. It was here that the country’s first man-made canal, the Bridgewater Canal, brought coal and other raw materials to the city’s warehouses throughout the eighteenth century. By the early 1960s, the district was an eyesore, but an influx of money cleaned it up, and it now boasts cobbled canalside walks, attractive café- bars and the Castlefield Urban Heritage Park (always open; free), centred on the excavated and partially reconstructed Mamucium Roman fort, from which the name “Manchester'' is derived. Exciting changes are afoot west of Lower Byrom St around the old ITV Granada studios. Newly labelled St John’s is a neighbourhood to watch, particularly as Factory, an impressive arts space.

From the old to the uber-new, Castlefield blends into Spinningfields , a glitzy, corporate district that’s home to law courts, designer shops and a crop of bars and restaurants, including a swanky rooftop terrace bar as the cherry on the top of shiny high-rise No. 1 Spinningfields. A couple of standout cultural attractions bookend the district.

Oldham Street, which shoots off northeast from Piccadilly Gardens, is the shabby gateway to the hip Northern Quarter. Traditionally, this is Manchester’s garment district and you’ll still find old-fashioned shops and wholesalers selling clothes, mannequins and hosiery alongside the more recent designer shops, music stores and trendy café-bars. The side wall of iconic indie emporium Afflecks sports a colourful series of mosaics depicting Manchester legends - from stars of Coronation Street to the Stone Roses. As rents in the Northern Quarter rise, the arty types are spilling over into Ancoats, an area of conservation across busy Great Ancoats Street. It’s here in the old red-brick factory buildings that you’ll find the most innovative new restaurants and bars popping up. Searching for Manchester holidays? The city centre has plenty of fantastic accommodation.