Exceptional Travel Writing
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museums cover a wide range of subjects, from textiles and costume,
to transport and the police. Manchester's art galleries contain important
collections, with the Wentworth famous for its British watercolors,
post-impressionists and 20th-century art. At Salford Museum and Art
Gallery the work of local artist L.S. Lowry can be seen. His images
of matchstick people set against an industrial landscape have earned
him popularity beyond the art world. Manchester is a major cultural center with 10 theaters including the Opera House. The Royal Exchange, famous for its modern productions, was originally the cotton exchange and a board still shows the prices when dealing stopped in 1968. |
The
new auditorium looks like a space capsule from the outside, but inside
is a very traditional "theater-in-the-round" built on and suspended
over the trading floor of the old exchange.
Another popular venue is the Free Trade Hall, home for more than a century
to the world renowned Halle Orchestra, where a wide range of music from
pop to promenade concerts is performed.
There are three libraries of special interest near the city center, in
addition to the Central Public Library in St. Peter's Square. One of them,
the Portico Library in Mosley Street, established in 1806 as a social
and literary institution, has many rare first editions. A plaque records
the names of its famous literary browsers, including that of Peter Mark
Roget, compiler of the famous Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.
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Definitely worth including in any visit to Manchester is a tour of the Granada Studios. Here you can explore life-size sets of the British House of Commons and Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street and stroll along the real Coronation Street. |
MANCHESTER:
BRIGHT, BRASH AND BREEZY
was first published in the Regina Leader-Post
