Unterwegs

Sights

The Lake District

The Lake District is an English national park situated in Cumbria. Covering 2,280 km² of lakes and mountains, it is England’s largest national park. It is home to England’s highest mountains, including Scafell Pike (978 m), its highest peak. The region, a haven for walkers, is known for having inspired the so-called Lake Poets, notably William Wordsworth.

The Lake District is a popular tourist destination offering a wide range of activities, particularly outdoor pursuits such as hiking, mountain biking and sailing (on Lake Windermere). A narrow-gauge railway, the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, is particularly popular with tourists, and there are pleasure boats, notably on Lake Ullswater. The area became a national park in 1951 and is therefore well protected from industrial development.

The Poets’ Trail is a route through the central part of the Lake District that pays tribute to the poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey) who were inspired in one way or another by the landscapes of the Lake District.

Lake Derwentwater

Derwentwater is one of the main lakes in the Lake District. It is situated in the Borrowdale valley just south of the town of Keswick. It is fed by the River Derwent. It measures approximately 4.8 x 1.6 km and has a maximum depth of 22 m. It is home to numerous islands, one of which, Derwent Island, features a house owned by the National Trust. The lake’s shores and the surrounding valleys are home to ancient, protected oak forests which support a rich variety of flora and fauna, such as red squirrels.

Trivia: images of Derwentwater were used as the backdrop for Maz Kanata’s castle on the planet Takodana in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Images of Derwentwater, sometimes slightly altered to make it appear shrouded in mist, are used in the video game Silent Hill 2 to depict Toluca Lake, the fictional lake on the shores of which the fictional town of Silent Hill – where the action takes place – is situated.

Moot Hall

Built: 1813.

History: the site originally housed an early 16th-century courthouse and market hall. The present-day Moot Hall was rebuilt in 1813. Over the centuries, it has served as a medieval court, a market hall, a local prison, a museum and, more recently, a tourist information centre for visitors to the national park. In early 2026, the historic visitor centre closed its doors due to budgetary constraints. The site is now being repurposed to house a local café concept whilst retaining a reception area for visitors.

Features: it is a Grade II listed building. It is built of local stone covered with white lime render and topped with a slate roof typical of the region. The building’s most famous feature is its square tower. It houses an unusual single-hand clock, installed in 1814.

A bit of history: Moot Hall is the starting point for famous extreme sporting challenges in the Lake District, notably the legendary Bob Graham Round (a circuit of 42 peaks to be completed in under 24 hours).

Listing: Grade II listed.

Pencil Museum

Opened: 1981.

History: the first pencil factory, owned by the Cumberland Pencil Company, opened in Keswick in 1832. A second factory, which still exists, was founded in 1920 and operated in Keswick until 2007, when it moved to Workington. The Pencil Museum opened in 1981 and is home to one of the world’s largest coloured pencils, a yellow pencil 7.91 metres long and weighing 446 kilos. The museum also houses a replica of the Seathwaite graphite mine. It welcomes over 80,000 visitors a year. Damaged by Storm Desmond in 2015, it reopened in 2017.

Greta Hall

Construction:

History: Greta Hall is known as the home of poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, famous poets of the Lake District. Coleridge lived there with his family from 1800 to 1803 and frequently visited his friend William Wordsworth in Grasmere. Robert Southey arrived at Greta Hall in 1803 and took Coleridge’s place there. He lived at Greta Hall until his death in 1843.

The house was visited by a great many poets and literary figures, including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Sir George Beaumont, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb, Thomas De Quincey and John Ruskin.

Converted into a girls’ school and then a boarding school until 1994, it subsequently operated as a guesthouse before being sold in 2021 to a private owner. It is therefore no longer open to visitors.

Trivia: in July 1877, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil and his wife, Empress Teresa, visited Keswick and Greta Hall to pay tribute to Robert Southey, author of A History of Brazil.

Listing: Grade I listed.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote some of his greatest poems in Keswick, is, alongside William Wordsworth and Robert Southey, one of the leading figures of the Lake Poets movement – poets inspired by the Lake District.

Orphaned by his father at a very young age, he was placed in a boarding school and had a difficult childhood. In 1791, aged 18, he secured a free place at Jesus College, Cambridge. He became involved in radical movements and began to abuse alcohol and laudanum to alleviate his mental distress. In 1794, he met poet Robert Southey. In 1795, Coleridge and Southey married sisters Emma and Sarah Fricker. The couple did not get on well but went on to have four children. In 1796, Coleridge published his first collection, Poems on Various Subjects, and entered politics, albeit unsuccessfully. That same year, he met William Wordsworth, with whom he formed such a close friendship that he would henceforth follow him wherever he went, first to Somerset, then to the Lake District. In 1798, they published a joint collection, Lyrical Ballads, a manifesto of Romantic poetry, which contained the first version of the famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Around the same time, he began using opium, again to alleviate his mental distress. It was during these years that he began his great medieval poem, Christabel, and wrote Frost at Midnight and The Nightingale. After a stay in Germany, he settled at Greta Hall, in Keswick, to be closer to Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived. Together with Southey, they came to be known as the Lake Poets or the Lakists. It was also at this time that he met Sara Hutchinson, sister of William Wordsworth’s future wife, who would become the great love of his life.

Having become a royalist, he accepted the editorship of the Morning Post, a newspaper that supported the government. He was rewarded with the title of Poet to the Court and a generous pension. In 1816, as his opium addiction had worsened, he became a patient of Doctor James Gillman in Highgate, in the northern suburbs of London. It was there that he completed his great work of prose, the Biographia Literaria. He died there in 1834. In 2018, his coffin was discovered in a former wine cellar incorporated into a crypt at St Michael’s Church.

Keswick Museum

Opened: 1873

History: Keswick’s first museum opened in 1873 at Moot Hall. One of its highlights is a relief map of the Lake District designed by Joseph Flintoft in 1837. The collections were moved to more suitable premises in Fitz Park in 1897. Following financial difficulties, in 2007 the local authorities handed over management of the museum to a specially created trust, partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which enabled the premises to be refurbished.

Collections: the museum holds nearly 20,000 objects, of which only 10 per cent are on display. They are mainly related to local history. As well as the relief map of Flintoft, the museum displays a collection of musical stones and a cat found mummified over 700 years ago near Penrith. The museum holds numerous documents relating to the Lake Poets, particularly Robert Southey, who lived in Keswick from 1803 to 1843.

Sights

The Beatles

Liverpool owes much of its reputation to four boys born in the city during the Second World War: The Beatles. The most famous and popular band of all time (with over a billion records sold – an all-time record) came into being on 6 July 1957 (70 years to the day, give or take three days, from this stage of the Tour) when a young aspiring musician, Paul McCartney, aged 15, met John Lennon, aged 16, who was playing in a skiffle band (a blend of folk and blues) called the Quarrymen. John invited Paul to join the band, and the most prodigious songwriting duo in the history of popular music was born. A year later, the band welcomed a third member, the 14-year-old George Harrison, who impressed his two older bandmates during an audition on the upper deck of a double-decker bus. The band changed its name (from Johnny and the Moondogs to the Silver Beetles) before settling on The Beatles. Their rhythm section at the time consisted of Stuart Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums. Sutcliffe died in 1962, prompting McCartney to switch instruments, whilst Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. The quartet, who had honed their skills in the clubs of Hamburg’s red-light district before Ringo joined, were now managed by Brian Epstein. He ran the record department at his parents’ department store and had discovered them at The Cavern, where the Beatles played regularly. He revamped their look and secured them a contract with the Parlophone label and producer George Martin, who in turn shaped their sound. They recorded their first single, Love Me Do, during the summer of 1962, and the track reached number 17 in the UK charts. The popularity of the Fab Four continued to grow, and in early 1963 they scored their first two number-one hits, Please Please Me and From Me To You. This marked the beginning of Beatlemania. The craze spread to the United States the following year, where I Want To Hold Your Hand soared to the top of the charts.

On 9 February 1964, the Beatles appeared on the hit programme The Ed Sullivan Show, and over 73 million viewers were introduced to the band. The face of popular music was changed forever. The band’s success became global and paved the way for that of dozens of other bands from Britain (the Rolling Stones, the Who, etc.).

Hit after hit followed (She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, All You Need Is Love, Hey Jude, Let It Be) as well as albums (Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles For Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles – the White Album, Yellow Submarine, Let It Be and Abbey Road) and films (A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour,Yellow Submarine). The Beatles’ popularity was such – their concerts sparked uncontrollable riots – that they stopped performing in public in August 1966 to focus on studio work after John Lennon caused a scandal in the US by claiming that the band was ‘more famous than Jesus’.

Tensions eventually mounted and the Beatles officially split up in April 1970. In just eight years, the Fab Four had revolutionised music, fashion and attitudes, and turned England into the new promised land of popular music. As for Liverpool, despite the looming crisis, it became a place of pilgrimage for the countless fans of John, Paul, George and Ringo. John Lennon was murdered in New York on 8 December 1980 and George Harrison died of cancer on 29 November 2001, putting an end to any hopes of a reunion.

The Cavern Club

Opened: 1957.

History: Alan Sytner, inspired by the Parisian jazz club Le Caveau de la Huchette, decided to set up a similar club in Liverpool. Opened on 16 January 1957 as a jazz club, it owes its name to the sombre atmosphere of the venue, set in a vaulted cellar. It was here that Brian Epstein (their future manager) first saw the Beatles perform, on 9 November 1961. Over a period of two and a half years – from 9 February 1961 to 3 August 1963 – the Beatles played 292 gigs there, often at lunchtime, building up their first core of fans. Many other bands and artists have performed there (notably Merseybeat acts such as Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas): The Rolling Stones, Arctic Monkeys, The Who, Pink Floyd, Oasis, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, The Kinks, Scorpions and Adele. Demolished in 1973, the venue was rebuilt opposite in 1982, partly using the same stones. The club also still exists as a reconstruction of the venue as it was in the Beatles’ era, inside the band’s museum, located on Liverpool’s Albert Dock. Visitors can see the band members’ signatures and their drawings on the back wall, behind the stage.

Current status: The Cavern Club is now divided into two separate venues: the vaulted room (a reconstruction of the one from the Beatles’ era), which primarily hosts bands covering the music of the Fab Four. The modern venue, with a larger stage and a state-of-the-art sound system, hosts bands of all styles and nationalities.

Liverpool FC

Another world-famous Liverpool institution is its football club, Liverpool FC, founded on 3 June 1892. Its players (the ‘Reds’) have played at Anfield Stadium since the club’s inception. Its emblem is the Liver Bird, a mythical creature, half cormorant, half eagle. The song You’ll Never Walk Alone, the club’s anthem and motto (written by Richard Rogers & Oscar Hammerstein and later performed by Mersey band Gerry and the Pacemakers), is known throughout the world. Liverpool FC boasts one of the finest records in European football, with six Champions League titles, three UEFA Cups and one FIFA Club World Cup, and one of the most successful records in English football, with twenty Premier League titles, eight FA Cups, ten League Cups and sixteen Community Shields. Among its most famous players are Roger Hunt, Kevin Keegan, Ray Clemence, Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres and Mohamed Salah.

Anfield Stadium

Built: 1881.

Opened: 1884.

Capacity: 61,276 spectators.

History: opened in 1884, Anfield was originally Everton’s home ground. In 1891, Everton became the first club to be crowned English champions at Anfield. Following a disagreement with the resident club, the stadium’s owner, John Houlding, decided to set up his own club, Liverpool Football Club, which played its first match there in September 1892. Liverpool finished the 1900–1901 season as English champions at Anfield, the second title won at the stadium and the first for the Reds. Liverpool FC won the 1905–1906 championship. Anfield was then refurbished by Scottish architect Archibald Leitch. The new ground was inaugurated in September 1906 in front of 32,000 spectators: all four sides of the pitch were now lined with stands. The press suggested naming the latest stand after the Battle of Spion Kop, where nearly 400 soldiers from Liverpool had perished in 1900. The ‘Kop’ was born. Floodlights were installed and switched on for the first time for a derby against Everton on 30 October 1957. The most significant expansion work at Anfield took place in 1973, when the stadium’s main stand was demolished and a new one built. In 1990, the Taylor Report required all English stadiums to have seating only. Anfield therefore had to be transformed and was rebuilt in 1994 to remove standing areas, notably those in the Kop. In 2007, the club’s new American shareholders planned to build a new 73,000-capacity stadium in a nearby park, Stanley Park, a project that was abandoned following the shareholders’ departure.

Fenway Sports Group took over the club in 2010 and decided to renovate Anfield; work began in 2014. A further renovation, which began in 2021, increased the stadium’s capacity to 61,000 spectators.

Attendance record: 62,000 spectators at a Taylor Swift concert in 2024.

Pier Head

Pier Head is a landmark area of Liverpool’s waterfront, on the eastern bank of the Mersey. It is one of the city’s most iconic urban landscapes and is home, in particular, to the three large office blocks known as the ‘Three Graces’: the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building. The site largely occupies the site of the former George’s Dock, which opened in the 18th century and was filled in at the end of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, it became a showcase for Liverpool’s maritime and commercial power, with the construction of the headquarters of the port authority, Royal Liver Assurance and the Cunard Line.

Royal Liver Building

Construction: 1908 to 1911

History: Royal Liver Assurance was founded in Liverpool in 1850. In the early 20th century, the company sought a larger and more prestigious headquarters. The site chosen was at the Pier Head, on part of the former George’s Dock, which had been filled in to create new building plots on the waterfront. The Royal Liver Building thus became the second of the three monumental buildings at the Pier Head, following the Port of Liverpool Building. The project was entrusted to Walter Aubrey Thomas, who had previously designed the Tower Building and the State Insurance Building. The foundation stone was laid on 11 May 1908. The construction project was notable for its large-scale use of reinforced concrete. The Royal Liver Building was completed in 1911 after just over three years of work. Its official opening took place on 19 July 1911. Upon completion, its height and reinforced concrete construction made it one of the most remarkable buildings of its time.

Features: together with the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, it forms the monumental ensemble known as the Three Graces. Standing 98.2 metres tall, the building is one of the first large reinforced concrete-framed buildings to be constructed anywhere in the world. Its granite cladding, its two clock towers and the two Liver Bird sculptures crowning them make it one of the main visual landmarks on Liverpool’s waterfront.

Listing: the Royal Liver Building has been listed as Grade I since 1966. It was also part of the ‘Liverpool – Merchant Port’ site, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List from 2004 to 2021.

Port of Liverpool Building

Construction: 1904 to 1907.

Style: Edwardian Baroque.

History: the building was designed by Sir Arnold Thornely and F.B. Hobbs, in collaboration with Briggs and Wolstenholme. It was built between 1904 and 1907, with a reinforced concrete framework clad in Portland stone. The building housed the headquarters of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB) for 87 years, from 1907 to 1994, when the organisation moved to new premises at Seaforth Dock. In 2001, it was sold to Downing, a Liverpool-based property developer, and between 2006 and 2009 underwent a major restoration costing £10 million, which restored many of the building’s original features.

Characteristics: The Port of Liverpool Building is in the Edwardian Baroque style and is distinguished by the large dome that crowns it, forming the building’s focal point. Roughly rectangular in shape, it features bevelled corners topped with stone cupolas. At 220 feet (67 m), the building was the tallest in Liverpool when it was built, and in 2025 it ranks sixteenth. Like the neighbouring Cunard Building, it is distinguished by its ornamental details both inside and out, and in particular by its numerous maritime references and its highly valuable decorative furnishings.

Listing: Grade II listed. It was also part of the ‘Liverpool – Merchant Port’ site, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List from 2004 to 2021.

Cunard Building

Construction: 1914 to 1917.

History: In 1914, the Cunard Steamship Company commissioned the construction of a new head office on the site of the former George’s Dock, between the Royal Liver Building and the Port of Liverpool Building. The building was designed by architects William Edward Willink and Philip Coldwell Thicknesse and drew inspiration from the grand palaces of the Italian Renaissance – in particular the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. It was built between 1914 and 1917. In 1934, the Cunard Steamship Company merged with the White Star Line to form the Cunard White Star Line, thereby becoming the world’s largest steamship company. The building featured separate waiting rooms for first-, second- and third-class passengers, a booking hall, a luggage storage area and a currency exchange office.

The building remained Cunard’s head office until the 1960s, when the company decided to move it to Southampton and relocate its global headquarters to New York.

Cunard subsequently sold the building to Prudential plc in 1969. In November 2001, the building was sold to the Merseyside Pension Fund, an organisation providing pension services to public sector employees. Today, the building houses a variety of office spaces for a wide range of organisations from the public and private sectors, after plans to convert it into a cruise terminal were abandoned.

Listing: Grade II listed.

St George’s Hall

Construction:

History: Built between 1841 and 1856, St George’s Hall combines within a single complex a large public and concert hall, a smaller concert hall, and spaces originally intended for assize courts and tribunals. It was designed primarily by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, then completed after his death under the direction of Charles Robert Cockerell, with the engineer Robert Rawlinson.

Characteristics: rising from a vast plinth and punctuated by Corinthian porticoes, the building occupies a prominent place in Liverpool’s architectural landscape. Historic England considers its interior to be exceptional, particularly due to the decorative work carried out under Cockerell’s supervision. The Great Hall notably retains a vast floor of Minton tiles, a grand organ built by Henry Willis, and a historic heating and ventilation designed in collaboration with David Boswell Reid. Following the end of its traditional judicial functions and a major restoration in the early 21st century, St George’s Hall is now used for cultural, civic and private events; it also houses Liverpool’s registry office.

Listing: Grade I listed since 1952.

Royal Albert Dock

Construction: 19th century.

The Royal Albert Dock, officially known as the Royal Albert Dock Liverpool and long referred to simply as Albert Dock, is a complex of docks, warehouses and port buildings situated on the banks of the River Mersey in Liverpool, England. Designed primarily by dock engineer Jesse Hartley, with the involvement of architect Philip Hardwick for the Dock Traffic Office, the complex was built from 1841 onwards and officially opened by Prince Albert on 30 July 1846.

The project is one of the finest examples of 19th-century port architecture. Its warehouses feature a structure of cast iron, brick and stone with brick vaults, greatly limiting the use of combustible materials. The buildings allowed ships to be loaded and unloaded directly from the warehouses lining the basin.

Gradually becoming unsuitable for the evolving design of ships and maritime traffic, the dock lost most of its commercial activity during the first half of the 20th century and closed in 1972. After several years of neglect, its restoration, which began in the early 1980s, became one of the flagship projects in the regeneration of Liverpool’s waterfront. The site has since been home to museums, cultural venues, shops, restaurants, hotels, offices and housing.

Listing: the former warehouses and the Dock Traffic Office have been Grade I listed since 1952 and form one of the largest groups of Grade I-listed buildings in the United Kingdom. The Albert Dock was part of the ‘Liverpool – Merchant Port’ site, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. The entire Liverpool site was removed from the World Heritage List in 2021. In 2018, the Albert Dock received royal authorisation to add the prefix ‘Royal’ to its name.

Speke Hall

Construction: 16th century.

History: construction of the present building began under Sir William Norris in 1530. The Great Hall was the first part of the house to be built, and the last major alteration to the building dates from 1598 with the addition of the north wing. The oak framework, typical of the period, rests on a red sandstone base surrounded by a moat. The house belonged to the Norris family until 1736, when Mary Norris, the heiress, married Lord Sidney Beauclerk. The house then passed to the family of Robert Watt, a Liverpool merchant. At the end of this period, in 1943, the house became the property of the National Trust. Following seven years of extensive restoration, completed in 1982, the National Trust took full responsibility for it in 1986.

A notable feature: the gardens date from the 1850s. In the courtyard of the main building stand two hundred-year-old yew trees, a male and a female, known as Adam and Eve. First mentioned in correspondence dating from 1712, they are estimated to be at least 500 years old.

Trivia: during the turmoil of the Reformation, the Norris family were Catholics. The house therefore featured a hiding place for a priest and a special peephole built into the fireplace of one of the bedrooms, allowing the occupant to keep watch over the approach to the house in order to warn the priest of any visitors arriving. There is also a listening hole, which allowed a servant to eaves ly on the conversations of people waiting to be let in at the front door.

Current use: the Home Farm building has been renovated and now houses a shop, a restaurant and the visitor centre. The laundry room has been converted into an educational room and the dairy houses educational displays. The estate welcomes nearly 250,000 visitors a year.

Listing: Grade 1 listed.

Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

Construction: 20th century.

History: in 1878, the Diocese of Liverpool became independent from that of Chester, and the Bishop of Liverpool decided to build a new cathedral. In 1902, the selection panel chose the design by Giles Gilbert Scott, a 22-year-old student, despite his complete lack of experience. Construction officially began on 19 July 1904 with King Edward VII laying the foundation stone. Scott’s architectural choices were quite innovative: he adapted the design during the build to meet urban requirements and incorporate new techniques. Construction was, however, severely delayed by the First World War. In 1924, exactly twenty years to the day after the start of construction, the third Bishop of Liverpool, Albert Augustus David, consecrated the central part of the cathedral (the chapter house, choir and eastern transept), in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary. In 1940 and 1941, the Blitz on Liverpool spared the building site. On 20 February 1942, Giles Gilbert Scott laid the final stone at the top of the tower. Work progressed slowly after the war, and Giles Gilbert Scott died in 1960 without seeing his work completed. His partner, Frederick Thomas, took over the management of the building site. The final consecration took place on 15 October 1978 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth.

Key features: the cathedral, built on St James’s Mount in the heart of the city, is the largest cathedral in the United Kingdom and the fifth largest in the world, covering an area of 9,687 m². It is also the largest Anglican cathedral in the world. The building is constructed of sandstone (quarried in Woolton, on the outskirts of Liverpool), which explains its red colour. It is 188.7 metres long, with a height of 53.3 metres at the base of the spire, whilst the spire itself stands 101 metres tall. It houses thirteen bells, known as the ‘Bartlett Bells’ in memory of Thomas Bartlett, a Liverpool resident who funded them. Together, they weigh 31 tonnes.

Trivia: A controversy erupted when unsuccessful competitors learnt that Giles Scott, the architect chosen for the project, was a Roman Catholic rather than an Anglican. However, it later transpired that the architect of Liverpool’s Catholic cathedral would be an Anglican, Edwin Lutyens.

Listing: Listed as Grade I since 1952.