Next tour: Tue 10 Apr (10.30am), Mon 2 July (11am), Tue 18 Sep (11am).

Meet: Outside St Ann’s Church.

It was the parliament of the cotton lords, the centre for cotton trading in the world’s leading cotton trading city.

The Royal Exchange is a baroque palace that is now home to the revered Royal Exchange theatre: one of the largest theatres-in-the-round in the world. But for more than 150 years it was where local cotton merchants came to do deals with fellow yarn agents, bleachers, spinners and shippers. Business day was Tuesday and Friday lunchtime – “High ‘Change – when some 3,000 merchants would fill what was the largest trading room in the world.

It closed as a cotton exchange in 1968, and after years of uncertainty, which included plans to convert it into an underground railway station, opened for theatre on 15 September 1976 with Laurence Olivier as guest of honour.

Since then its programmes and performances have become legendary, with stars such as Tom Courtenay, Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet featured.

This is one of Manchester’s greatest buildings with a history to match that brings in Friedrich Engels, Queen Victoria and Vanessa Redgrave. We spend around half an hour here, often with a peek into the auditorium itself if there are no rehearsals taking place, and then off to the John Rylands Library, another formidable cotton palace for a longer tour.