About Manchester

and the city's inhabitants are referred to as Mancunians. The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium, which was established in c. 79 CE on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically, Manchester was in Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire, south of the River Mersey were incorporated into the city during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century.

Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. The building of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761 built to transport coal triggered an early-19th-century factory building boom which transformed Manchester from a township into a major mill town and borough that was granted city status in 1853. In 1877, Manchester Town Hall was built and in 1894 the Manchester Ship Canal opened; which at the time was the longest river navigation canal in the world, which in turn created the Port of Manchester linking the city to sea. Manchester's fortunes decreased in the subsequent years after WW2 due to deindustrialisation. However, investment in the last two decades, spurred by the 1996 Manchester bombing – which was the largest bomb ever detonated in peacetime Britain – spearheaded extensive regeneration of Manchester, particularly in the city centre.

The city is notable for its architecture, culture, music scene, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Known through time as a hotbed for radical ideas, Manchester was the site of the world's first railway station and is where scientists first split the atom, and