Manchester itinerary for first-timers

The civic heart of Manchester. St Peter's Square is ringed by the round, domed Central Library, one of the most distinctive buildings in the city, and crossed by the trams. A minute away, Albert Square is dominated by the Victorian Gothic Town Hall and its clock tower, one of the great civic buildings of 19th-century England, with the Albert Memorial standing in the square in front of it.

• Central Library
• Town Hall clock tower
• Albert Memorial
• Albert Square

The Town Hall has been closed for a long restoration project, so check whether the interior is open before planning a visit; the façade and the square can be enjoyed at any time.

North of Albert Square, King Street was once the city's banking street and is lined with grand old bank buildings. It leads to St Ann's Square, a pedestrian square with an 18th-century church at one end and the vast Royal Exchange at the other, where cotton was once traded on a huge scale. The trading hall is now a theatre, and its old arcade is lined with small shops.

• King Street
• St Ann's Church
• St Ann's Square
• Royal Exchange

A few steps north, Exchange Square opens onto the oldest corner of Manchester. The Cathedral, a late-medieval church with fine carved woodwork, stands near the river, and in the gardens beside it the glass wedge of the National Football Museum tells the story of the game in the city that loves it most. The medieval Chetham's Library, the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, is hidden just behind.

• Exchange Square
• Manchester Cathedral
• Cathedral Gardens
• National Football Museum
• Chetham's Library

Look inside the Cathedral for the carved choir stalls; the National Football Museum next door is the city's big sight for football fans who are not going to a stadium.

Spinningfields is Manchester's modern business district, a cluster of glass towers and squares between Deansgate and the River Irwell. On its edge, the John Rylands Library is the city's most astonishing building: a Victorian Gothic library that looks like a cathedral, with a vaulted reading room lit by stained glass. Deansgate, the long main street outside, runs south from here towards Castlefield.

• Hardman Square
• John Rylands Library
• Historic Reading Room
• Deansgate

The John Rylands Library is free to visit; go up to the Historic Reading Room on the first floor.

At the southern end of Deansgate, Castlefield is where Manchester began. The Romans built their fort of Mamucium here, and part of it has been reconstructed; the world's first passenger railway station opened on Liverpool Road in 1830, and its buildings are now part of the Science and Industry Museum. Below, the Bridgewater and Rochdale canals meet in a basin of old warehouses, towpaths and footbridges under towering iron railway viaducts.

• Science and Industry Museum
• Roman fort remains
• Castlefield Arches
• Castlefield Basin
• Railway viaducts

The canal basin is at its best in the early evening, when people gather along the towpaths and the light falls on the viaducts.

Piccadilly Gardens is the busy hub of the city centre, a square of fountains and lawns where trams and buses meet. From here Market Street, the main shopping street, runs west towards the Arndale centre, while the grid of streets to the north is the Northern Quarter.

• Piccadilly Gardens
• Market Street
• Piccadilly

Just north of Piccadilly, the Northern Quarter is a grid of old textile warehouses now filled with independent shops, record stores, cafés and bars. Its walls are covered in murals and street art, and a walk down Newton Street passes some of the best-known pieces, the grand Victorian former main post office and the Greater Manchester Police Museum, set in an old Victorian police station.

• Newton Street
• Street art and murals
• Former main post office
• Police Museum
• Hilton Street

Wander the side streets between Oldham Street and Newton Street; new murals appear regularly, and the record and vintage shops cluster here too.

Across Great Ancoats Street, Ancoats was one of the world's first industrial suburbs, a district of huge cotton mills and workers' housing. After decades of decline its mills have been restored as homes and studios, and its streets are now among the most appealing in the city. Anita Street, two rows of tidy Victorian terraces, was built to tackle the city's 19th-century housing crisis; Cutting Room Square sits beside the old church of Hallé St Peter's; and the giant Royal Mills line the Rochdale Canal.

• Anita Street
• Cutting Room Square
• Hallé St Peter's
• Murray's Mill
• Royal Mills
• Rochdale Canal

Following the Rochdale Canal south brings you to Canal Street, the heart of Manchester's Gay Village, a waterside strip of bars that is busiest in the evening. In Sackville Gardens next to it, a bronze statue of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and computing pioneer who worked at the University of Manchester, sits on a bench.

• Canal Street
• Rochdale Canal
• Sackville Gardens
• Alan Turing Memorial