Norwich audiotours

Norwich has more medieval churches within its old walls than any other city in Northern Europe outside London, thirty-two of them, many of which are still standing and several of which have been converted to arts venues, restaurants, and community spaces without losing their stone geometry. The Norwich Cathedral, begun in 1096, has the second-tallest spire in England and a cloister whose carved bosses depict the entire Old and New Testament in hundreds of small carved panels above head height. The medieval street plan is still largely intact, and the market square has operated continuously since it was established in 1075.

The city's position in the Norfolk Broads, at the confluence of the Wensum and Yare rivers, made it the second city of England during the medieval period when the wool trade with Flanders was the engine of English prosperity.

The merchant wealth of those centuries produced the Elm Hill precinct, a cobbled street of 15th and 16th-century buildings that looks like a film set but is entirely genuine, and the Maddermarket Theatre, which has been staging plays since 1921 in a former medieval church. Colman's Mustard, founded in 1814 in Norwich, flavored kitchens across the British Empire for two centuries from a factory on Carrow Road that only closed in 2019.