Bradford, UK City of Culture // West Yorkshire, UK

Location: Thornton area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK

Date: 30 March,2025

Bradford is a city in the northern English county of West Yorkshire. Housed in a 19th-century mill, Bradford Industrial Museum includes exhibits on textile machinery, steam power and engineering. The National Science and Media Museum focuses on photography, film and television, and has an IMAX cinema. Lister Park has a boating lake and Cartwright Hall art gallery, with a space dedicated to local artist David Hockney.

Beautiful Bradford: 15 great reasons to visit the UK’s most-improved city:
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From its justly famous curry houses to world-class museums, the West Yorkshire city has it all. Here’s a selection of some of its very best bits:

Tue 12 Nov 2019 17.17 GMT

Bradford’s new status as the UK’s “most-improved” city will be a feather in the cap of a place that has never accepted its tag as “segregation city”. There has always been far more to the place – too much, in fact – so here’s our guide to the best things to see and do in Bradford:

Prashad:
Bradford takes curry incredibly seriously (it has won the award for UK’s curry capital six times) and Prashad, with its exclusively vegetarian menu, is still the pick for many Bradfordians. The restaurant’s Mayur Patel recently co-founded Bundobust, a chain of vegetarian Indian eateries that boasts an impeccable selection of beers.

Karachi:
Rick Stein’s favourite curry house comes a close second, and it still lives up to the decade-old Guardian review that said the food was so “blisteringly good that basic good manners demanded it be shovelled in with bare hands”.

Waterside Bistro:
If you don’t fancy curry, there is the this bistro in Shipley, which proudly boasts of its northern produce (“Cheese from Castleford, herbs from York and our fish from Hartlepool,” says co-owner Ian Johnson). It impressed the critic Giles Coren so much with its locally sourced fare that he asked: “Who needs London, Paris or Monte Carlo when you’ve got Bradford?”

The Bradford literature festival:
Forget the cosy confines of Edinburgh, Cheltenham or Hay; experience Bradford’s well-respected literature festival instead. It has been running since 2014 and previous attendees include Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson, Gary Younge and the city’s own AA Dhand. Dates for 2020 have already been announced (26 June to 5 July) but there is something on throughout the year, including Words in the Winter, a mini programme of events taking place in early December.

National Science and Media museum:
The name might have changed (twice) and the V&A might have pinched large parts of its photography collection, but the Science and Media museum is still a world-class cultural institution in the heart of West Yorkshire. The spruced up Pictureville cinema mixes the latest blockbusters – often shown on its immersive Imax screen – with the best arthouse films. There is also inventive non-cinema programming, such as The Forgotten Showman – the forthcoming exhibition about Robert Paul, a largely forgotten British cinematography pioneer.

The Brick Box:
Located on Ivegate, Bradford’s oldest street, the Brick Box is a slightly anarchic, incredibly well-curated cultural curio that has become a permanent fixture in a neglected area of the city. It is run by Rosie Freeman and Eleanor Barrett, and passersby are encouraged to stick their heads in to see what is going on. That can range from clothes swaps, supper clubs and craft workshops to open mic nights, spoken word events and exhibitions.

Haworth:
The Brontë’s association with Haworth has made it world famous and the cobbled streets in the city often feature in the numerous cycling events that have visited Yorkshire since the Tour de France’s grand départ in 2014. Bradford was included in the route for the UCI World Championship’s this year, and Howarth regularly features in the Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain. The small market town doubles as a great place to watch the peloton fight for position and, as a great base to explore the Dales and Brontë Country. The Brontë Parsonage museum is an excellent place to start.

Saltaire:
A trip to Saltaire is always worthwhile. The model village that was christened a Unesco World Heritage site in 2001, hosts events such as the annual Saltaire festival, YardFest (where live music is played in people’s backyards) and Arts Trail (where residents open up their houses to exhibit artists). There’s also Roberts Park, a beautifully manicured green space that hosts cricket matches in the summer and is a great place to lounge by the River Aire.

Salts Mill:
Salts Mill is also essential – a refurbished former mill that also houses an enviable collection of art from Bradford’s favourite son, David Hockney. Lister Park also has a brilliant Hockney gallery, a Japanese garden and pedalos…(incomplete).

Info: the guardian.com