BathBath is a small city located in Somerset in England. It houses around 80,000 people. Bath is a spectacularly beautiful city which stands on the River Avon among the hills of England’s West Country. The city’s compactness and striking architecture - Roman baths and sweeping Georgian terraces - combine to produce one of the most elegant sights in Europe. The ancient Celts, who first inhabited this area, believed that Bath’s hot springs were sacred, but it was the Romans who built the temple and the famous baths - now restored to their original grandeur.
In the early eighteenth century, under the direction of the socialite, Beau Nash, Bath became England’s premier spa town, where the rich and celebrated members of fashionable society gathered to ‘take the waters’ and enjoy its theatres and concert rooms. During this period the renowned architect, John Wood, laid the foundations for a new Georgian city to be built using the honey-coloured stone that gives Bath its mellow and indefinable quality.
However, Bath is far from a fossilised museum piece. Besides the annual Bath Festival - now recognised as one of the most prestigious festivals in Europe - there are countless other arts activities spread over the year. Art is permanently on show at the Victoria Art Gallery, at the University-run Holburne Museum and at many other, more intimate galleries and shops. Bath is also home to the Museums of East Asian Art and Costume.
Bristol.With a population of 400,000, and metropolitan area of 550,000, it is England's sixth, and the United Kingdom's ninth, most populous city, one of England's core cities and the most populous city in South West England. It received a royal charter in 1155 and was granted county status in 1373. For half a millennium it was the second or third largest English city, until the rapid rise of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham in the Industrial Revolution of the 1780s. It borders on the unitary districts of Bath and North East Somerset (BANES), North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, and has a short coastline on the Bristol Channel.
Bristol is one of the centres of culture, employment and education in the region. From its earliest days, its prosperity has been linked to that of the Port of Bristol, the commercial port, which was in the city centre but has now moved to the Bristol Channel coast at Avonmouth and Portbury. In more recent years the economy has been built on the aerospace industry, and the city centre docks have been regenerated as a centre of heritage and culture.
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© Nigel Boden, 2007.