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Manchester

A city famous for one of the world's best football teams and one of the most watched "soap operas", Manchester is the centre of a metropolitan county divided into ten administrative districts and covering an area of 1,287 square kilometres. The football team is, of course Manchester United, who play out of Old Trafford, while the television "soap" is Coronation Street, which is produced at Granada Studios in Manchester. The city has been inhabited for over 2,000 years, since the future Roman Emperor Agricola built a fort on the site. Today, 2.6 million people live within Manchester's city boundaries. The city has many prominent buildings: the Cathedral has some of the finest medieval carvings in Europe and 20th century stained-glass by the artist Anthony Hollaway; the Town Hall was designed in Victorian Gothic style by Alfred Waterhouse in 1877, and houses the Ford Maddox Brown murals; and the Royal Exchange, under its three impressive domes, was once the centre of the global cotton trade. In complete contrast, Urbis is a museum set in a dramatic glass building rising high above the centre of Manchester. It offers interactive exhibits leading you on journeys through cities such as Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo. Beyond Manchester, a trip to the award-winning East Lancashire Railway is to go back in time, with restored steam engines puffing between a series of old railway stations.