John Rylands Library and Royal Exchange tour

The John Rylands Library has been called “the Taj Mahal of the North-West”, for it is a palace built out of love; a widow’s love for her late husband, a family’s love of religious literature; a city’s love of Gothic architecture.

It is one of the world’s greatest libraries for it has a remarkable collection: Dickens’ novels in their original wrappers; a first edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; the second largest collection of works by the pioneering printer William Caxton; and most remarkably of all the 2nd Century St John Fragment – the oldest existing remnant of the New Testament.

The Royal Exchange is a baroque palace that is now home to the revered Royal Exchange theatre: one of the largest theatres-in-the-round in the world. But for more than 150 years it was where local cotton merchants came to do deals with fellow yarn agents, bleachers, spinners and shippers who would fill what was the largest trading room in the world.

Tour by Ed Glinert, New Manchester Walks.

Tour starting point: outside St Ann's Church, St Ann Street, M2 7LF