Norwich, Norfolk's medieval city

Norwich is the county town of Norfolk, in the east of England, and for much of the Middle Ages it was England's second city after London. It has about 145,000 inhabitants, more than 200,000 including the urban area, and preserves one of the most complete medieval centres in the country: a Norman cathedral with the second-tallest spire in England, a 12th-century castle, cobbled lanes and more medieval churches than any other city north of the Alps. It is said that Norwich had "a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day". It is also a literary city, the first in England to be named a UNESCO City of Literature, and the gateway to the Broads, Norfolk's great network of rivers and lakes.

Trains from London Liverpool Street take under two hours, and the small Norwich Airport is a few kilometres from the centre.

England's second city

Norwich began as a cluster of Anglo-Saxon villages along the River Wensum. After the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror had a castle built here, and in 1096 Bishop Herbert de Losinga founded the cathedral. Thanks to Norfolk's wool and cloth, the city became extremely rich: in the 14th and 15th centuries it was one of the most populous in the kingdom, with a large market and merchants trading with Flanders and the Baltic.

In the 16th century thousands of Protestant weavers fleeing Flanders and Wallonia arrived, known as the Strangers: they brought new weaving techniques and, so the story goes, the habit of breeding canaries. This is the origin of the nickname of the city's football club, Norwich City, known as The Canaries, who play in yellow and green. In 1549 thousands of peasants led by Robert Kett gathered on Mousehold Heath to protest against the enclosure of common land: Kett's Rebellion was bloodily suppressed, but today Kett is remembered as a local hero.

The cathedral

Norwich Cathedral, built of pale stone shipped from Normandy, is one of the masterpieces of English Romanesque architecture. Its spire, about 96 metres high, is the second tallest in England after Salisbury, and its two-storey cloister is the largest monastic cloister in the country. The vaults of the nave and cloister are decorated with more than a thousand carved and painted roof bosses, showing Bible scenes, animals and fantastic figures: a small mirror trolley helps you see them without getting a stiff neck. Outside, by the east wall, is the grave of Edith Cavell, the English nurse shot by the Germans in 1915 for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. Around the cathedral lies the Cathedral Close, one of the largest in England, with old houses, lawns and the watergate of Pull's Ferry, where boats laden with stone once moored.

The castle and the historic centre

Norwich Castle, a large square Norman keep built on an artificial mound, dominates the centre. For centuries it was a prison, then it became a museum; it has been the subject of a major restoration project that recreated the rooms of the Norman royal hall. It houses collections of archaeology and natural history and paintings by the Norwich School, the group of 19th-century landscape painters led by John Crome and John Sell Cotman, who portrayed Norfolk's skies and countryside.

At the foot of the castle lies Norwich Market, one of the largest open-air markets in England, with about two hundred stalls under colourful striped roofs, trading for more than nine hundred years. Above the square rises the 1930s City Hall, with its bronze lions, and beside it the medieval Guildhall, with its chequered flint and stone façade. Nearby, the Royal Arcade is an Art Nouveau arcade of 1899 with colourful tiles, while the Norwich Lanes are a tangle of alleys with independent shops, cafés and bookshops.

Elm Hill and Tombland

Elm Hill is the city's most famous medieval street: a sloping cobbled lane lined with timber-framed houses, largely rebuilt after a great fire in 1507. At the bottom you reach Tombland, the old Anglo-Saxon marketplace in front of the cathedral, whose name has nothing to do with tombs but comes from an old word meaning "open space".

Medieval churches and Julian of Norwich

Of the more than fifty medieval churches Norwich had in the 15th century, more than thirty survive, many with the round or square flint towers typical of East Anglia. Some are still used for worship, others have become theatres, galleries, children's centres or concert halls. The most famous is the small church of St Julian, where at the end of the 14th century the mystic Julian of Norwich lived walled up in a cell: her Revelations of Divine Love is considered the first book written by a woman in English. Her best-known line, "all shall be well", is still quoted around the world.

Museums and culture

West of the city, on the University of East Anglia campus, the Sainsbury Centre is an art museum housed in a large glass and aluminium hangar designed by Norman Foster in 1978. Its collections bring together ancient art from every continent and modern masterpieces by Picasso, Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. In the centre, Strangers' Hall is a medieval merchant's house with rooms furnished in different periods, and Dragon Hall a 15th-century merchant's hall with a timber roof decorated with a carved dragon. Norwich also has a long industrial tradition linked to Colman's mustard, made here from 1814 until 2019.

A day in Norwich

A possible itinerary: the morning at the cathedral and its cloister, then a walk through Tombland and Elm Hill. For lunch, a snack among the market stalls. The afternoon is for the castle and its museum, then the Royal Arcade and the Norwich Lanes. At sunset you can walk along the Wensum, from Cow Tower, a 14th-century brick tower, to Pull's Ferry. With a second day, visit the Sainsbury Centre or take a boat on the Broads.

Around Norwich

• The Norfolk Broads, a network of navigable rivers and lakes created by medieval peat digging, to explore by hire boat: Wroxham, a quarter of an hour by train, is the most convenient starting point.
• The Norfolk coast, with the beaches of Cromer, famous for its crabs, and the dunes and seals of Blakeney Point.
• Blickling Estate, a Jacobean National Trust house linked to Anne Boleyn's family.
• The royal residence of Sandringham, about an hour and a half away.

Living in Norwich

Norwich is often listed among the most pleasant cities in the UK: it is safe, green and rich in culture and nightlife, with a large university community and a lower cost of living than the south-east. The economy is based on insurance, services, the university and research, especially at the Norwich Research Park, which specialises in food and agricultural science. The main drawback is isolation: there are no motorways, and rail links to the rest of the country, apart from London, are slow.

Getting there and getting around

• By train: from London Liverpool Street in about an hour and fifty minutes; services also to Cambridge and the Midlands.
• By air: Norwich Airport has domestic flights and a few flights to Europe; Heathrow and Stansted can be reached by train or car.
• In the city: the centre is compact and walkable; buses serve the university and the suburbs.

For travel around the rest of the country see trains and transport, and for other cities British cities.

Tips for your visit

• How long: one day for the centre; two or three to add the Broads and the coast.
• When to go: May to September; in May the Norfolk and Norwich Festival brings music, theatre and art to the whole city.
• A tip: look up in the cathedral cloister and search among the roof bosses for the most curious scenes, such as those of the Apocalypse.

Norwich on the map

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