Manchester is a city, and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, in North West England, with a population of 514,417 in
2013. It lies within the United Kingdom's second most populous urban area, with a population of 2.55 million, and third-most populous
metropolitan area. Manchester is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and an arc of towns with which it forms
a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council.
The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium, a variant of which name
(Mancunium) is preserved by the city's demonym: residents are still referred to as Mancunians. The Roman fort was established in
about 79 AD on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. It was historically a part of Lancashire, although areas of
Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township but
began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile
manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.
Manchester achieved city status in 1853, the first new British city for three hundred years. The Manchester Ship Canal, at the time the longest
river navigation canal in the world, opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its
fortunes declined after the Second World War however, owing to deindustrialisation, but investment spurred by the 1996 Manchester bombing led to
extensive regeneration.
Today Manchester is ranked as a beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and is consequently the highest ranked
British city except for London. Its metropolitan economy is the third largest in the United Kingdom with an estimated PPP GDP of US$92 billion as
of 2014. Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, after London and Edinburgh. It is notable for its
architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections.
Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station and it was in the city that scientists first split
the atom and developed the stored-program computer.
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