Hotels near Manchester, United Kingdom

A little about Manchester...

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. The City of Manchester metropolitan borough, which has city status, has a population of 452,000. Manchester lies at the centre of the wider Greater Manchester Urban Area which has a population of 2,240,230, the United Kingdom's third largest conurbation. It is also the second largest urban zone in the UK and the fourteenth most populated in Europe.

Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to Contemporary architecture. The widespread use of red brick characterises the city. Much of the architecture in the city harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade.

Manchester also has a number of skyscrapers built during the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest of which is the CIS Tower located near Manchester Victoria station. The Beetham Tower, completed in 2006, is an example of the new surge in high-rise building and includes a Hilton hotel, a restaurant, and apartments. On its completion, it was the tallest building in the UK outside London, although an even taller building, the Piccadilly Tower, is scheduled to begin construction behind Manchester Piccadilly station in 2007. The Green Building, opposite Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, almost unique in the UK.

Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser, Oliver Heywood, William Ewart Gladstone and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Duke of Wellington.

Transport: The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London with over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester region radiating from the city. The buses were then taken over by GM Buses which after privatisation was split into GM Buses North and GM Buses South and taken over by First Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester respectively. First Manchester also operates a three route zero-fare bus service called Metroshuttle which carries commuters around Manchester's business districts. Manchester is also well served by train. In terms of passengers, Manchester Piccadilly is the busiest train station in England, outside London.Local operator Northern Rail operates all over the north of England, and other national operators include Virgin Trains. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first passenger railway in the world.

Nightlife: Manchester played several key roles in the development of nightclub and DJ culture, most notably with The Hacienda, the nightclub which helped to popularise Acid House and House Music before its closure in 1997. One of the oldest venues is the Band on the Wall, a live music club in the Northern Quarter. It was built around 1862 as the flagship pub of a local brewery and originally called The George & Dragon. In 1975 it was taken on by jazz musician Steve Morris and Frank Cusick, and renamed The Band on the Wall, a longtime nickname for the club since the late 1920s alluding to its stage high on the back wall.

Along with other areas that are frequented by late night revellers (such as Castlefield, Deansgate Locks, the Printworks and the Northern Quarter), Manchester boasts the famous Canal Street, the centre of the city's gay community. This was made famous by the Channel 4 programme, 'Queer as Folk', and is the centre of the annual Pride celebrations, held on the last weekend in August.

There are two universities in Manchester: the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. The University of Manchester is the largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, and was created in 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST.