Manchester travel guides & articles
All 14 in-depth pieces we’ve published on Manchester — newest first.
Tours & tickets
John Rylands Library on a Rainy Manchester October Afternoon
The Deansgate reading room is free, open Wednesday to Saturday only, and built for the kind of afternoon October keeps handing out; getting it right takes a little planning.
Tours & tickets
Four December hours through Manchester's wine bars
Four hours of city wine bars, starting at the self-pour taps on Fountain Street and finishing with natural wine on the canal in Ancoats.
Tours & tickets
Seeing Manchester Cathedral in October Without a Queue
The city's oldest building is free to walk into. What takes planning in October is the Eucharist hour, the gig schedule and the walks that sell out on fixed dates.
The Whitworth Anchors Manchester's Free Art Season
A season-by-season route through Manchester's free public galleries, from the Whitworth's park-side halls to the Northern Quarter's changing murals, with no admission fee at any stop.
Manchester Day: The City Parades As Itself
Every July, Manchester turns its industrial past and multicultural present into a free street carnival — here's where to watch it, and what to see around it in 2026.
Cottonopolis Eternal: Manchester's Industrial Bones and the Warehouses That Found New Life
A history-led walk through the cotton exchange, the canal basin and the mills that became galleries, cafés and flats — Manchester's industrial bones, still visible under the surface in 2026.
Rusholme After Dark: Inside Manchester's Curry Mile Ritual
On Wilmslow Road, dinner is just the opening act — a mile of neon, charcoal smoke and dessert queues that runs later than anywhere else in the city.
A Guide to the Music Scene in Manchester
From acid-house warehouses to a chapel turned gig room, here is how to spend a music-led trip in the city that never quite stopped inventing British pop.
The Old Trafford and Etihad rivalry: a football pilgrimage through Manchester's two great cathedrals
A honest, ground-by-ground itinerary through the two stadiums, statues and matchday pubs that turn Manchester's derby into the closest thing English football has to a religious pilgrimage.
Tours & tickets
Playing the Crystal Maze in Manchester's Castlefield
Four zones, seventy-five minutes and a dome full of wind: what the Crystal Maze in Castlefield asks of a team of eight, and how to get a slot.
Salford Quays: Manchester's Docks Reborn as Culture
A mile of restored Manchester dockside, walked in order, from the theatre that saved the Quays to the museum that closes the story.
Walking Manchester's Buried Rivers and Drinking in Its Cellars
From a genuine Victorian river culvert you wade through in waders to the city's grandest basement ballroom, Manchester's underground is real, bookable, and worth building a weekend around.
Tours & tickets
Cotton and Curtain-Up at Manchester's Royal Exchange in November
The Great Hall, the 50th-anniversary costume exhibition and the market at the front door cost nothing until 15 November 2026. You only pay for the tours.
Madchester and Beyond: How One Rainy City Rewrote the Sound of Pop
From back-room punk pubs to a cathedral-scale arena — a measured, venue-by-venue guide to hearing Manchester's music where it actually happens in 2026.