Birmingham, the city of a thousand trades

Birmingham is the UK's second city and one of its most underrated. For two centuries it was the "workshop of the world", the city of a thousand trades where buttons, guns, jewellery, pens, bicycles and cars were made; in the 1960s it was carved up by ring roads and concrete, and today it is in the middle of a long transformation that is changing its face. Young and multicultural like few other European cities, with more miles of canal than Venice, one of the world's finest orchestras, a jewellery quarter still at work and England's most famous chocolate factory, Birmingham rewards those who give it a few days. It lies in the heart of England, just over an hour and twenty minutes by train from London.

Birmingham at a glance

With about 1.15 million inhabitants, Birmingham is the most populous local authority in the UK after London and one of the largest in Europe. It is the centre of the West Midlands, a conurbation of almost three million people including Wolverhampton, Coventry, Solihull and the towns of the Black Country, led since 2024 by metro mayor Richard Parker. Locals are called Brummies, from the city's nickname, Brum, and speak an unmistakable accent, often mocked by the rest of the country but now enjoying a revival.

It is one of Europe's youngest cities, with almost half its population under thirty, and one of the most diverse: at the 2021 census, for the first time, fewer than half of its residents described themselves as white. Large communities of Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Caribbean, Irish, Somali and Yemeni origin, together with more recent arrivals from Europe and Africa, make it a mosaic of cultures, faiths and cuisines.

History: from the city of a thousand trades to the city of the future

Origins and the Industrial Revolution

In the Domesday Book of 1086 Birmingham was a village of a few households. In 1166 it obtained the right to hold a market, and its fortunes became tied to the iron trades, helped by coal and ore from the nearby Black Country. Unlike other industrial cities, Birmingham never had one single great industry: its strength lay in thousands of small specialist workshops making nails, buckles, buttons, firearms, metal "toys" and jewellery. With no guilds and none of the restrictions of an ancient borough, it attracted craftsmen, inventors and religious dissenters.

In the 18th century the Lunar Society met here, a circle of scientists and industrialists who gathered on nights of the full moon: its members included Matthew Boulton, James Watt, the chemist Joseph Priestley, the potter Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin, Charles's grandfather. At the Soho Manufactory Boulton and Watt perfected and produced the steam engine that powered the Industrial Revolution. Canals, dug from 1769, linked the city to the ports and the rest of the country: Birmingham's network, with more than a hundred miles of waterways, is still one of the densest in the world.

The model city and the 20th century

In the second half of the 19th century mayor Joseph Chamberlain made Birmingham a model of municipal government: he bought out gas and water, cleared slums, built schools, libraries and the grand Corporation Street. The town became a city in 1889 and gained its university in 1900. At Bournville the Quaker Cadbury family built a chocolate factory surrounded by a model village for workers, with houses, gardens and parks.

During the Second World War Birmingham, a centre of aircraft and arms production, was one of the most heavily bombed cities after London and Liverpool. Post-war reconstruction in the 1950s and 1960s was radical: a concrete inner ring road, the Bull Ring shopping centre, the motorway tangle of Spaghetti Junction. The city became the capital of the British car industry, with the Longbridge works and the Austin and Rover marques, and drew workers from the Commonwealth. The decline of industry in the 1970s and 1980s was very hard, and in 1974 IRA bombs in two city-centre pubs killed 21 people.

Revival

Since the 1990s Birmingham has undergone a long regeneration: Brindleyplace and the restored canals, the International Convention Centre and Symphony Hall, the new Bull Ring of 2003 with the famous Selfridges building clad in fifteen thousand aluminium discs, the new New Street station and the Library of Birmingham. In 2022 the city hosted the Commonwealth Games. In the Curzon Street area the terminus of the HS2 high-speed line is rising, which will link the city to London in under fifty minutes, though its opening has slipped into the 2030s.

There are difficulties too: in 2023 the city council declared it could not balance its budget, mainly because of equal pay claims, and had to cut services and raise council tax; in 2025 a long bin strike left piles of rubbish in the streets. It is the less glamorous face of a city undergoing a real but uneven renewal.

What to see in Birmingham

The centre

The civic centre revolves around Victoria Square, with the Victorian Council House and the Town Hall, modelled on a Roman temple, where Mendelssohn performed and Dickens gave public readings. Next door, Chamberlain Square is home to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Centenary Square is dominated by the Library of Birmingham, opened in 2013, its façade wrapped in interlocking metal rings that recall the city's jewellery trade, with roof gardens and the Shakespeare Memorial Room rebuilt on the top floor. St Philip's Cathedral, a small 18th-century Baroque church, holds four extraordinary stained-glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones, who was born in the city.

The commercial heart is the Bullring, with its indoor market and St Martin's church, the oldest in the city, and Grand Central station above New Street.

Museums

• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG): a major collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, with works by Burne-Jones and Rossetti, and the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest Anglo-Saxon hoard of gold and silver ever found, discovered in 2009 by a metal detectorist. The museum has been reopening in stages after refurbishment.
• The Barber Institute of Fine Arts: at the university, a small but outstanding collection, from Botticelli to Rubens, from Turner to Monet and Van Gogh, with free entry.
• Thinktank: the science museum in Eastside, with the 1779 Smethwick Engine, the world's oldest working steam engine.
• Back to Backs: the city's last surviving court of back-to-back workers' houses, restored by the National Trust, telling the story of families from the 1840s to the 1970s.
• Museum of the Jewellery Quarter: a jewellery workshop left exactly as it was when its owners closed the door in 1981.

Neighbourhoods and canals

• The Jewellery Quarter: where hundreds of workshops still operate and a significant share of British jewellery is made; it is also home to the Victorian Key Hill Cemetery and excellent bars.
• The canals and Brindleyplace: waterside walks among old locks, cast-iron bridges and bars; boat trips leave from here.
• Digbeth: the former industrial district turned creative hub, with street art, breweries, the Custard Factory, clubs and locations from Peaky Blinders, set in 1920s Birmingham.
• The Balti Triangle: in Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath, where in the 1970s Pakistani and Kashmiri restaurateurs created the balti, curry cooked and served in a steel bowl.
• Moseley and Kings Heath: bohemian suburbs south of the centre.

Beyond the centre

• Cadbury World in Bournville: the interactive chocolate factory attraction, best booked ahead, and the Cadburys' model village.
• Aston Hall, a 17th-century Jacobean mansion, and Soho House, Matthew Boulton's home where the Lunar Society met.
• The botanical gardens in Edgbaston and cricket at Edgbaston Stadium.

Sport, music and culture

Football divides the city between Aston Villa, founded in 1874, European champions in 1982 and back in the Champions League in 2024, who play at Villa Park, and Birmingham City, at St Andrew's. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), which Simon Rattle brought to international fame in the 1980s and 1990s, plays at Symphony Hall, considered one of the world's best concert halls for acoustics; the city is also home to Birmingham Royal Ballet. Birmingham is the birthplace of heavy metal: Black Sabbath started here, giving their farewell concert at Villa Park in July 2025 just weeks before Ozzy Osbourne's death, as did Judas Priest; so did UB40, Duran Duran and the British reggae and bhangra scenes. The Birmingham Rep is one of the country's leading producing theatres, and Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's town, is less than an hour away.

Festivals and events

The city's calendar reflects its diversity: the St Patrick's Day parade in March is one of the largest in the UK, the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi and Eid fill the parks in spring, Birmingham Pride in May is among the best attended in the country and the Caribbean carnival livens up the summer. From November to December the Frankfurt Christmas Market in Victoria Square and New Street is said to be the largest German Christmas market outside Germany and Austria.

Eating and drinking

Birmingham is one of the UK's rising food capitals, with several Michelin-starred restaurants, mostly in the centre and the Jewellery Quarter. The signature dish is the balti, best tried in the restaurants of the Balti Triangle. Cuisines of the Indian subcontinent are everywhere, alongside Caribbean, Chinese (in the Chinese Quarter around the Arcadian), Middle Eastern and African food. Digbeth hosts street food markets and craft breweries, and the Bullring Market is the place for fruit, fish and spices. The local sweet, of course, is Cadbury chocolate.

Living in Birmingham

Birmingham is one of the country's great economic engines outside London, with financial and professional services, automotive and advanced manufacturing (Jaguar Land Rover has plants and research centres here), logistics, health and five universities, including the University of Birmingham, a Russell Group member. In recent years many companies and public bodies have moved staff from London, attracted by lower costs. Rents and house prices are well below those of the capital. At the same time the city has some of the highest unemployment and child poverty rates in England, with sharp differences between the wealthier southern suburbs and the poorest districts. For the wider picture see living in the UK, wages and inequality.

Practical information

• By air: Birmingham Airport, with direct flights from various European cities, is about 10-15 minutes by train from New Street station.
• By train: from London Euston to Birmingham New Street in about an hour and twenty minutes; from Marylebone to Moor Street with cheaper fares and longer journeys. Excellent links to Manchester, Bristol, Oxford and the north.
• Getting around: the centre is compact and largely pedestrianised. The West Midlands Metro tram links the centre with Edgbaston, Wolverhampton and the Black Country; buses cover the whole area with contactless payment.
• Where to stay: around New Street and Grand Central, at Brindleyplace by the canals, or in the Jewellery Quarter for a quieter atmosphere.

Day trips

From Birmingham you can easily reach Stratford-upon-Avon, with Shakespeare's birthplace and the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatres, Warwick Castle, one of the most spectacular in England, Coventry Cathedral, rebuilt beside the ruins of the one destroyed in 1940, Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO site and cradle of the Industrial Revolution, and the villages of the Cotswolds. Oxford is just over an hour by train.

See also British cities, the Industrial Revolution, England, Manchester and Oxford.

Birmingham on the map

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