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Photo: Alan Stanton, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Manchester's main classical music venue is a stunning musically-inspired building dating from 1996. It is home to the world-famous Hallé orchestra and boasts an enormous 5500-pipe organ across the whole of one wall. The building is also home to a cafe and restaurant.
The Bridgewater Hall is a concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s, and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra as well as to the Hallé Choir and Hallé Youth Orchestra and it serves as the main concert venue for the BBC Philharmonic.
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Manchester Central (formerly "G-MEX") was once Manchester Central railway station and it carries the air of many of the grand stations in London with its enormous arched steel frame and giant railway clock. These days it is home to Manchester's largest exhibitions and fairs. Attached is the much newer and thoroughly unimpressive International Conference Centre.
16-screen cinema multiplex. Shows the usual Hollywood movies.
Victorian railway viaduct transformed into a 'sky park' Advance booking essential. Check website. Open on an experimental basis until summer 2023.
This is a great museum for those interested in technology and industrial heritage: sited at one end of the world's first passenger railway line. The working cotton weaving machines are particularly worth experiencing. Catch one of their regular demonstrations of their operation. There is also the opportunity to explore the city's former sewers (now fully cleaned!) to get an idea of the living (and dying) conditions of Manchester's cotton workers. Most impressive of all is the huge collection of working engines in the Power Hall (closed until 2024), powered by steam, gas, water, you name it. The museum also hosts the first steam train (and with it, the first ever vehicle to run faster than a horse), as well as the first programmable computer with a cathode ray tube memory.
New landmark building containing performance spaces and new home to the Manchester International Festival. Opening in June 2023.