Photo by flickr user Manky Maxblack
Today Manchester positively glows with civic pride. The city was synonymous with the final death throes of industrial decline, but was reborn in the aftermath of the 1996 IRA bomb. Urban regeneration became the byword of late Nineties Manchester and the success of the Commonwealth Games in 2002 sealed its renaissance as a modern industrial city.
The city that gave us the world's first professional football league, the first commercial computer and the first ever Marks and Spencer store is now all boutique hotels and stylish restaurants with the glass shard-design Beetham, now Hilton, Tower a symbol of the new, stylish face of Manchester.
This rebirth has been accompanied by a slew of smart new hotel openings that cater for all budgets. They make for superb urban-escape weekends and showcase the city's new status as the style capital of the North. The Piccadilly district is the main base for shoppers and diners, the funky Northern Quarter is growing as a centre for galleries and cafes, while Salford is developing fast as Manchester's, ahem, Left Bank.
The stereotypical images of those Coronation Street-style terraces are but a distant memory. The order by which the hotels are listed bears no reflection on our preference.
Written by David Atkinson
