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The city of Birmingham is situated just to the west of the geographical centre of England, across an area of relatively high ground, ranging around 150-200 metres above sea level. The main north-south watershed of Britain actually passes through Birmingham. The Birmingham area is prone to tornadoes the most recent of which was witnessed in mid-2005. The watershed of the River Severn and River Trent can clearly be seen along the Perry Barr area of Birmingham and areas near Erdington where the level and gradient of the land changes significantly.
To the south west of the city lie the Clent Hills and Walton Hill, which reach 315 m and have good views over the city.
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Main article: Architecture of Birmingham
 City of Birmingham Council House, with Dhruva Mistry's 'The River' in the foreground (commonly known as 'the floozie in the jacuzzi')
City of Birmingham Council House, with Dhruva Mistry's 'The River' in the foreground (commonly known as 'the floozie in the jacuzzi')
Although Birmingham has existed as a settlement for over a thousand years, today's city is overwhelmingly a product of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, as the real growth of the city began with the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, relatively few buildings survive from its earlier history.
Traces of St Martin's in the Bullring, where a church has stood since at least the 12th century. The current church (begun around 1290) was extensively re-built in the 1870s, retaining some original walls and foundations. A few other buildings from the medieval and Tudor periods survive, among them The Old Crown public house in Digbeth, the 15th century Saracen's Head public house and Old Grammar School in Kings Norton and Blakesley Hall in Yardley.
The city grew rapidly from Georgian times and a number of buildings survive from this period. Among them are St Philip's Cathedral, originally built as a parish church, St Paul's Church in the largely Georgian St Paul's Square, Soho House in Handsworth, the home of Matthew Boulton, and Perrott's Folly in Ladywood (which is said to have later inspired J. R. R. Tolkien).
The Corporation Street in the city centre. Across the city, the need to house the industrial workers gave rise to miles of redbrick streets and terraces, many of back-to-back houses, some of which were later to become inner-city slums.
 The new Selfridges building
The new Selfridges building
Continued population growth in the interwar period, saw vast estates of semi-detached houses being built on greenfield land in outlying parts of the city such as Kingstanding and Weoley Castle, but the coming of World War II and the Blitz claimed many lives and many beautiful buildings too. However, the destruction that took place in post-war Birmingham was also extensive: dozens of fine Victorian buildings like the intricate glass-roofed Birmingham New Street Station, and the old Central Library, were razed in the 1950s and 1960s and replaced with modernist concrete buildings. In inner-city areas too, much Victorian housing was redeveloped and existing communities were relocated to tower block estates like Castle Vale.
The planning decisions of the post-war years were to have a profound effect on the image of Birmingham in subsequent decades, with the mix of ring roads, shopping malls and tower blocks often referred to as a 'concrete jungle'. In more recent years, Birmingham has learnt from what many see as the mistakes of the 1960s and instituted the largest tower block demolition and renovation programmes anywhere in Europe. There has been a lot of new building in the city centre in recent years, including the award-winning Future Systems' Selfridges building, an irregularly-shaped structure covered in thousands of reflective discs (see picture), the Brindleyplace development and the Millennium Point science and technology centre.
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 A canal tunnel, looking towards Gas Street Basin, in Birmingham city centre
A canal tunnel, looking towards Gas Street Basin, in Birmingham city centre
See main article: Transport in Birmingham
Due in part to its central location in England, Birmingham is a major transport hub on the motorway, rail, and canal networks.
It is served by a number of major roads, including the M5, M6, M6 Toll, M40, and M42 motorways. Junction 6 of the M6 is also one of Birmingham's most famous landmarks, and probably the most famous motorway junction in the UK: Spaghetti Junction, officially called the Gravelly Hill Interchange.
Local public transport is by Wolverhampton). The number 11A and 11C outer circle bus routes are the longest urban bus routes in Europe. The city's main station, Birmingham New Street, is at the centre of the national rail network, whilst Birmingham International railway station serves Birmingham International Airport which has flights to cities across Europe and several Asian and North American destinations.
Birmingham is also notable for its Venice". Although this is in some sense correct (Venice has 26 miles), Birmingham is far larger [3], and the types of waterway are very different. Birmingham's canals are comparatively shallow artificial channels, while those in Venice are primarily reinforced natural channels between islands of the lagoon on which the city stands.
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Main article: Sport in Birmingham
A cricket club was in existence in Birmingham as early as 1745, and today the city is home to Warwickshire County Cricket Club whose ground at Edgbaston is also a venue for international test matches. International athletics meetings take place at the open-air Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr, the home of Birchfield Harriers athletic club, which numbers many Olympic medallists among its past and present members. The National Indoor Arena (NIA) meanwhile is a major indoor athletics stadium and in 2003 hosted the 9th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics. The NIA also hosts events in many other sports, such as the World Indoor Badminton Championships.
The first ever game of lawn tennis was played in Edgbaston in 1859; international tennis is still played at Edgbaston's Priory Club.
The city is home to two of the UK's oldest professional football teams: Aston Villa (1874) and Birmingham City (1875), both of whom currently play in the Premier League. The world's first professional football league was founded at a meeting in Aston on March 22, 1885 under the auspices of William McGregor, a director of Aston Villa.
Birmingham also has a professional Rugby Union side, Rugby Football Club">Moseley RFC, and there is professional basketball, boxing, hockey, skateboarding, and greyhound racing in the city.
Birmingham has been awarded the title National City of Sport by the Sports Council.
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Main article: Arts in Birmingham
Popular music
 Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Although its music scene is not as renowned as those of Manchester, Birmingham has had a vibrant and varied musical history over the last half-century.
In the 1960s, the "Brum Beat" era featured blues and early progressive rock bands such as The Fortunes, Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, The Move and The Moody Blues.
The city is often described as the birthplace of heavy metal music, with Judas Priest and Black Sabbath coming from Birmingham. Robert Plant and John Bonham came from nearby towns, and played in local Brum Beat bands before forming one half of Led Zeppelin.
In the 1970s members of The Move and The Idle Race formed the Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. The 1970s also saw the rise of reggae and ska in the city, with Steel Pulse and later on UB40, The Beat and Musical Youth. Singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading had many hits during this decade.
The 1980s brought Duran Duran, possibly the most successful new romantic group, and Dexy's Midnight Runners, and the 1990s the Charlatans, Dodgy and Ocean Colour Scene. Recent chart success has come from Mike Skinner (a.k.a. The Streets), R&B singer Jamelia and Editors.
Birmingham International Jazz Festival is the largest of its kind in the UK.
Party in the Park, a popular chart music event, is Birmingham's largest music festival.
Birmingham has also been synonymous in the development of the British electronic music scene. Digbeth, near the city centre, features some of the country`s top dance clubs, and the nearby National Exhibition Centre has played host to the biggest indoor dance events in the country.
Classical music
The internationally-renowned City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's home venue is Symphony Hall, where it gives frequent performances. The equally world-renowned Birmingham Royal Ballet also resides in the city as does the world's oldest vocational dance school, Elmhurst School for Dance.
The Birmingham Triennial Music Festival took place from 1784 - 1912 and was considered the grandest of its kind throughout Britain. Music was written for the festival by Mendelssohn, Gounod, Sullivan, Dvorak, Bantock and most notably Elgar, who wrote four of his most famous choral pieces for Birmingham.
Albert William Ketèlbey was born in Alma Street, Aston in 1875.
Birmingham's other city-centre music venues include The National Indoor Arena (NIA), the CBSO Centre, Adrian Boult Hall at Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham Town Hall (currently closed for refurbishment).
Theatre
There are many theatres in Birmingham. The four largest professional theatres are the Alexandra Theatre ("the Alex"), Birmingham Repertory Theatre ("The Rep"), the Birmingham Hippodrome and the Old Rep. The Mac and Drum arts centres also host many professional plays.
The Fierce Festival teams with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre annually to present an series of quirky performances from local and national companies.
Literature
Literary figures associated with Birmingham include Samuel Johnson , J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthur Conan Doyle, Louis MacNeice, Washington Irving, David Lodge, W. H. Auden and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Visual art
 The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham has one of the largest collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world at The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. Edward Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham, spent his first twenty years in the city, and later became the president of the Birmingham Society of Artists. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts was declared 'Gallery of the Year' by the 2004 Good Britain Guide. For a fuller list of art galleries in Birmingham, see Arts in Birmingham.
Other famous Birmingham artists include Keith Piper and Donald Rodney.
Graffiti (or "spraycan art") culture appeared in the early 1980s, and graffiti art competitions are still regularly held.
The construction of the Bull Ring Shopping Centre allowed local and international artists to display their work. These included three light wands which were erected at the main entrance, a huge mural on a glass facade located at the entrance facing New Street station and three fountains in St Martin's square in the shape of cubes, which are illuminated at night in different colours.
Festivals and shows
Birmingham is home to many national, religious and spiritual festivals including a Birmingham Tattoo is a military show that has taken place in the city for several years. The currently biennial Caribbean- style Birmingham International Carnival was originally the Handsworth Carnival, held in Handsworth Park from 1984, but now takes place in the August of odd- numbered years, parading through the streets of Handsworth to Perry Barr Park. Birmingham Pride takes place in the 'gay village' and attracts up to 100,000 visitors each year. The city also hosts an annual arts festival (Artsfest) during September, where people can enjoy many of the regions' arts, free.
The city's largest single-day event is its Dublin).
Film and media
Birmingham is unusual in supporting two local newspapers - the Birmingham Post and the Evening Mail - as well as the Sunday Mercury, all owned by the Trinity Mirror, who also produce The Birmingham News, a weekly freesheet distributed to homes in the leafy surburbs along with Forward, the Birmingham City Council's free newspaper distributed to homes and via community centres and public buildings.
The Birmingham Film Festival takes place annually, and the StarCity is said to be Europe's largest leisure and cinema complex and is not far from the Britain's only permanent drive-in cinema maintained by T-Mobile; both are in Nechells.
The BBC has its regional headquarters, BBC Birmingham, in the Mailbox, in the Convention Quarter (where they relocated from Pebble Mill), and many television and radio programes are produced in the city, including the world's longest running radio soap opera, The Archers. The Central TV and BBC studios are famous for many shows, including Tiswas, Crossroads, Dalziel & Pascoe, Midlands Today, the BBC Asian Network,.
Local radio stations include BRMB, Galaxy, BBC WM and Heart FM, and Kerrang, Birmingham's first dedicated rock station.
Birmingham is also the hub for various national The Sikh Times, Raja TV (based in the Mailbox).
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Hotels in United Kingdom - Birmingham >>
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