Newcastle audiotours

Newcastle upon Tyne began as a Roman fort called Pons Aelius on Hadrian's Wall in 122 AD, where the Romans built the first bridge across the Tyne. The Norman castle that gave the city its current name went up in 1080, and the industrial revolution transformed it into one of the engines of the British Empire, building ships and locomotives that moved the world. Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge, completed in 1849 as the first combined road and rail bridge in the world, still carries traffic over the Tyne alongside six other crossings including the iconic Tyne Bridge of 1928.

Grey Street, curving down from Grey's Monument toward the river, is one of the finest pieces of 19th-century urban planning in England.

The uniform sandstone facades and sweeping curve were laid out in the 1830s and have survived intact, which is more than can be said for most British cities of comparable ambition. John Dobson, the architect responsible, also designed the Central Station, a temple to the railway age with a curving glass and iron roof that remains in daily use.