The Seven Wonders of Manchester

What was the world’s biggest trading room, masterpieces of religious art, Europe’s oldest library, the city’s cathedral and a celebration of Manchester’s greatest gift to the world – Work.

These are some of the wonders of Manchester, the world’s first industrial city, capital of the North.

• Chetham’s, the oldest library in Europe built into the 15th century Tudor buildings in the heart of mediaeval Manchester.

• The Trinity painting inside Manchester Cathedral, honouring the church’s three saints.

• The Royal Exchange: once the world’s biggest trading floor, now home to a futurist-looking and world-renowned theatre.

• The stained glass inside St Ann’s Church with its Masonic and Kabbalist connections.

• The extraordinary Stations of the Cross paintings in St Mary the Hidden Gem, the oldest post-Reformation Catholic church in the country.

• A glorious representation of the full city coat of arms, complete with its religious symbolsim and slave ship.

• Ford Madox Brown’s monumental painting Work inside Manchester Art Gallery. This is Manchester’s greatest work of art, explained, outlined, resolved in wondrous detail.

• The vintage Rolls Royce outside the Midland Hotel. What on earth is it doing there?

And we will finish in an eighth wonder for much-needed refreshments.