Manchester Museum has re-opened with new exhibition spaces and a modern two-storey extension to the back of the building. This physical transformation is symbolic of the more ethical changes happening within the building.

Re-opening in 2024, Manchester Town Hall, the Grade I-listed £325m restoration project is nearing completion. The Town Hall’s instantly recognisable clock tower stands 280ft tall over Manchester, and its four dials have kept time for our city since New Year’s Day 1879.

Grade I-listed Manchester Art Gallery is one of the city’s premier-league spaces for art, boasting an outstanding Victorian collection alongside regularly changing contemporary shows.

A global destination for arts, music and culture in Manchester, operated by the team behind Manchester International Festival, Factory International venue is set to reshape the city’s cultural output and standing while bringing a cool billion to the economy over a decade.

Dedicated to inspiring visitors through revolutionary, world-changing ideas, the Science and Industry Museum pairs historic sites with a dynamic, contemporary science programme.

HOME, Manchester’s £25m cross-arts venue, is one of the city’s crown jewels when it comes to culture, packed with two theatres, five cinema screens, a large gallery, bar, café and bookshop.

Originally founded in 1889 as the first English gallery in a park in memory of the industrialist Sir Joseph Whitworth, “for the perpetual gratification of the people of Manchester”, in recent years its contemporary exhibitions programme and international collections have catapulted The Whitworth into the international art world orbit.

The Royal Exchange is surely up there with the most unique theatres in the country, and is highly regarded for both new writing and its take on the classics.

With its discreet side entrance, tucked away down Mosely Street, leading onto an initially unpromising set of winding stairs, the well-hidden Portico Library is one of Manchester’s finest gems. This is a perfect place to while away an afternoon, exploring what’s on, taking in the beautiful Regency-period architecture, learning about the building’s history, and enjoying a spot of tea and cake in the great domed gallery.

This iconic, neo-Classically curved library, dating back nearly a century, has 110,000 items, a media centre, a unique Black history collection, a Secret Garden-themed children’s section and hosts the largest public music library in the country.

The French was recently announced as one of the UK’s top 100 restaurants according to Squaremeal. It’s one of just two entries from Manchester (the other is the equally excellent Erst in Ancoats — see below!) and while we’d argue that our fair city has many, many more besides these, it’s worth celebrating all the same.

Now into its fifth decade, the RNCM is an enduringly vital player on the Manchester music scene, filling the city’s cultural calendar with diverse, explorative and bold public events each season, including free weekly lunchtime concerts which make classical music incredibly accessible.

With its forward-thinking schedule of exhibitions, this small but influential contemporary art gallery opened in 1984 and has become a key part of the North of England’s cultural fabric.

One of Manchester’s most important cultural buildings, when The Bridgewater Hall opened in 1996 it marked the beginning of a period when the city sloughed off its post-industrial skin in favour of new builds and new ambition.

Contact has long been a go-to place for emerging theatre in the city, with commissioned work here going on to high acclaim. Set back from the road but recognisable by its eccentric H-shaped turrets, there’s no other theatre like it in the country.

As impressive as its neo-Gothic architecture are its collections: the rare printed texts that include preserved papyrus fragments, the letters of local author Elizabeth Gaskell and an original Gutenberg Bible.

Set in Ancoats, Time Out’s ‘11^th coolest neighbourhood in the world’, Erst is quietly becoming one of Manchester’s, possibly the North’s defining restaurants. The entire menu is a treat, full of post-Nordic creations that are both simple and endlessly fascinating.

Albert Hall is an objectively stunning venue, the kind that could never be built again. Originally a Wesleyan Chapel, its huge stained glass windows, ceiling arches and ornate vestibules create a very atmospheric backdrop to live gigs. Downstairs you’ll find cook haus, bakery, bier palace and wunderbar, Albert’s Schloss.

Oh, Victoria Baths, how we love thee: this Grade-II listed former (and occasionally current!) swimming baths is a Victorian stunner, all deep green glazed tiles, terracotta twiddly bits and Turkish baths.

One of our favourite places in Manchester, Manchester Craft & Design Centre is hands down the most reliable one-stop-shop for unique, but not over-priced, gifts in the city. Welcome to the mecca of all things beautiful, handmade and one-of-a-kind.

Originally built in 1963, this huge dance-hall, complete with a sprung-floor, was for that decade, and during the acid house era, an iconic part of Manchester’s music scene. Following a multi-million-pound transformation project, it’s picking up right where it left off, and some.