"Welcome to our Fine City"

​

Norwich is the principal town of Norfolk, England’s fifth largest county and a region of productive farmlands, sleepy villages, wetlands and waterways brimming with wildlife, a stunning coastline and quiet roads and lanes.  There’s never been heavy industry here, so it has unspoiled appeal.

Once Norwich was Britain’s second largest city with a walled area still greater than London or York. Our cathedral has the second-tallest spire in England and there are more medieval churches here than any other city in western Europe. It’s famous for once having had one pub for every day of the year and a different church for every Sunday in the year!

We have documented history going back over one thousand years to the Anglo-Saxons, evidence of Viking invasion and habitation and an indelible impression stamped upon the city by Norman conquerors, exemplified by the dominating presences of Castle and Cathedral. The rich medieval era brought wealth through its woolen trade, while the 18th to 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consumer industries such as boot and shoe and food and drink manufacture; products with household names exported around the world.

It also has a great cultural and social heritage: the first free library, the first book written by a woman, the first provincial newspaper, celebrated artists and writers like John Crome and George Borrow, whose view of Norwich as, “A Fine City”, is his legacy.

​

“Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.”

Stephen Fry