Once a manorial township, Manchester’s booming textile manufacturing industry during the Industrial Revolution saw it transforming into one of England’s major urban centres, reflected in nicknames such as “Cottonopolis” and “Warehouse City”. After the prosperity brought by the cotton mills, Manchester established itself as the financial centre of the region and has remained one of Northern England’s most thriving metropolises to this day.
The modern city continues to bloom as do the numbers of visitors arriving on cheap flights to Manchester. It is the United Kingdom’s fifth-largest financial centre outside of London and one of the biggest retail areas in terms of sales, a shopping Mecca that boasts the UK’s largest inner city shopping centre, the Arndale Centre.
Culturally, the city is also the equal of any in the country, with thriving arts and music scenes and many galleries and museums. Manchester’s music scene has produced many of the most popular British groups of recent decades such as The Smiths, The Buzzcocks, and Joy Division and The Stone Roses. Excellent music venues are in abundance here also, such as the Manchester Evening News Arena, which is the busiest indoor arena in the world and the largest of its kind in Europe.
