Manchester

A neo-gothic cathedral built to hold books, all soaring stone vaults, stained glass and a Historic Reading Room that looks like the nave of a church, opened in 1900 in memory of a cotton magnate. Free to walk in and gawp, and it keeps fragments of the earliest known New Testament and a wall of medieval manuscripts. Reader, it is a lot.

Best shot The Historic Reading Room down its aisle of gothic arches, or the sandstone facade on Deansgate.

The oldest free public library in the English-speaking world, founded in 1653 inside a 15th-century sandstone college, dark oak and chained books and a reading room where Marx and Engels sat at the same window bay working out the end of the world as they knew it. Visit by appointment or tour. Almost nobody does.

Best shot The chained medieval reading room and its dark oak bays.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A late-medieval gothic church, blackened outside and richly carved within, with the widest medieval nave in England and a set of misericords, the little hinged choir seats, hiding grotesques and demons underneath. Free, central, and older than it looks.

One of the largest cemeteries in Europe, a vast Victorian and Edwardian necropolis in the south of the city where much of old Manchester lies, from mill owners to the odd rock star. Endless, leafy and quiet. The Smiths wrote a song about loitering here, which tells you the vibe.

Best shot Avenues of Victorian headstones under old trees, in low autumn light.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

An Edwardian "water palace" of 1906, all stained glass, glazed brick and mosaic, closed since 1993 and left in a state of magnificent decay, open now only on event days and tours. Peeling grandeur, empty pools, extraordinary light. One of the most atmospheric buildings in the city.

Best shot Light through the stained glass over the empty tiled pool.

• Adults only

The university’s museum, free and recently rebuilt, strong on Egyptology, with mummies and a famous "moving" statuette, alongside natural history and a live vivarium. A proper old-school cabinet brought up to date. Good on a wet afternoon, and there are plenty of those.

• Quiet

A black-and-white Tudor manor marooned in Salford, five hundred years old, with a great hall, a star chamber and a well-documented White Lady among its several ghosts. Free, quiet and genuinely old in a city that knocked most of its old down.

• Quiet

Alfred Waterhouse’s colossal 1877 neo-gothic town hall, a cliff of spires and statues under a great clock tower, recently reopened after a long restoration. One of the finest Gothic Revival buildings in the world, and free to admire from Albert Square even when you cannot get in.

Best shot The floodlit gothic clock tower over Albert Square, at blue hour.

• Touristy

A hotel inside a hulking 1928 former bank on King Street, done out in dark art-deco decadence, deep colours, low light and a members’ bar called Club Brass up top. It leans hard into the Gotham name and the noir mood, and it is the right kind of over the top.

• Adults only
• Quiet

A hotel in Waterhouse’s vast red-terracotta neo-gothic former insurance building, with a spectacular tiled Victorian spa hall and a great clock tower. Grand, dark and central, gothic architecture you can sleep inside.

• Adults only
• Quiet

The grand Edwardian railway hotel of 1903, terracotta and marble and a famous afternoon tea, where Rolls first met Royce. Old-money grandeur in the middle of everything.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A tiny, defiantly old pub of tiled corridors and coal fires, with murals of the 1819 Peterloo massacre on the back-room walls and hundreds of whiskies behind the bar. It has survived every attempt to modernise it. The best old pub in the city.

• Solo-friendly
• Adults only

A little triangular Victorian pub clad head to toe in deep bottle-green glazed tiles, marooned on its own island of tarmac, with a battered interior and a proper old landlady’s welcome. A city landmark you can drink in.

• Solo-friendly

A hidden cocktail bar behind the door of a working-looking launderette, entry by booking through a phone on the wall. Once inside, dark, tight and serious about the drinks. Very silly, very good.

• Adults only

A narrow Victorian chop house of 1901, all green tiles, tight booths and a long marble bar, doing proper old English food, corned beef hash, steak and kidney, since forever. A time capsule with good gravy.

• Adults only

A rambling four-floor emporium of independent stalls in the Northern Quarter: goth and punk clothing, band shirts, piercing studios, tattooists, vintage, incense and oddities, all mosaic-clad and chaotic. The headquarters of alternative Manchester, and it has been for forty years.

• Solo-friendly

A cheerfully chaotic basement of secondhand books, magazines, records, badges and unfilable ephemera, crammed floor to ceiling with the flotsam of the last century. Dig, and you will surface with something strange.

• Solo-friendly

A big Northern Quarter vintage store, decades of clothing by the rail, strong on denim, leather and the properly retro. A reliable dig for black among the tie-dye.

• Solo-friendly