Birmingham Audio Tours

Birmingham registered more patents than any other British town in the century between 1760 and 1850, a statistic that names the city accurately. James Watt developed his industrial steam engine here in 1776. The Jewellery Quarter, centered on Vyse Street and operating continuously since the 18th century, produced half the world's jewelry at its Victorian peak. And the canal network, known as the Birmingham Canal Navigations, ran deeper into the city than Venice has canals, built before the railways and still used today, earning Birmingham the nickname that Venetians do not appreciate: Venice of the North.

The city was rebuilt substantially after the 1940 Blitz and again in the 1960s, with mixed results.

But specific things survived intact. St Philip's Cathedral, consecrated in 1715, sits in Colmore Row in a square that feels genuinely continental. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham holds a collection that includes Van Gogh, Rubens, and Degas that most standalone art museums would headline. The Bullring Shopping Centre's Selfridges building, wrapped in 15,000 aluminum discs when it opened in 2003, announced Birmingham's 21st-century architectural ambition without embarrassment. The city has 571 parks, more than any other European city, including Sutton Park, a 2,400-acre national nature reserve within the city boundary.