Leicester

Leicester is one of the largest cities in the East Midlands region of England, the capital of the traditional county of Leicestershire, with a population of some 330,000 in the metropolitan area.

Understand

Leicester is one of the oldest English cities, having been founded by the Romans as Ratae Coritanorum in 50 CE. Presently, it is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United Kingdom. It is also Britains first environment city. Leicester has grown rapidly throughout the centuries and is now a cosmopolitan city with friendly people from all races, backgrounds and cultures creating a culturally diverse city.

Get in

By road

Leicester is conveniently situated adjacent to the M1 Motorway, allowing speedy road access south to London and north to many other major English cities.

By Rail

Leicester is on the main London to Leeds rail route operated by Midland Mainline. There are up to four trains to and from the capital every hour. The journey takes about one hour ten minutes. Leicester also offers direct rail access to Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Cambridge and Birmingham.

By Air

The city is close to East Midlands International Airport and a drive should not take much longer than 30 minutes depending on the traffic situation. Birmingham International Airport is also within a 45 minute to 1 hour drive from Leicester.

Do

The city centre of Leicester has a vibrant and friendly atmosphere along with many department stores and a large shopping centre called The Shires. Shoppers can expect to find the majority of items and services offered within a main city in the UK. The Haymarket centre has also recently undergone changes and has improved within the last 10 years. Those who wish to visit historic sights can visit the Jewry Wall museum located near the city centre. The National Space Centre is also a popular tourist attraction with tourists visiting daily from all over the world. It is the Nations only Space Centre of its kind. Abbey park located near the Belgrave roundabout, is a large park with a pets corner, large sports fields, childrens play areas and beautiful gardens.

See

• National Space Centre
• Gas Museum
• Leicsester Guildhall
• Jewry Wall Museum
• New Walk Museum and Art Gallery
• Abbey Park
• The Golden Mile (Belgrave)

External links

• Go Leicestershire - the official tourism site for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
• Leicester City Council - official municipal web site

This text of this article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. It has been slightly modified to fit the general design of this website. The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Evan Prodromou, Wikitravel user Zeddy and the following WikiTravel users: Pjamescowie. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Leicester.