Please book here with eventbrite.

Manchester is one of the world’s most glorious Victorian cities, home to one of the greatest collection of paintings (by the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle), the streets around the gallery lined with exquisitely designed Classical, Italianate, Gothic and baroque structures that made Manchester city centre into one of the most beautiful new cities.

Away from the teeming, typhoid-infested tenements, Manchester was a paradigm of progressive politics, a cultivated cosmopolitan city run by enlightened egalitarians such as Richard Cobden and John Bright amidst a landscaped lined with glorious Gothic architecture.

The city brought the world parliamentary democracy, the railways, religious freedom, tolerance of immigrants and what was to become the country’s biggest university.

What an achievement!

Ed Glinert, compiler of the forthcoming Manchester Encyclopaedia, leads this tour around the gems and giants of Victoriana.