Manchester

Manchester (/ˈmæntʃɪstər, -tʃɛs-/) is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million.

The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (castra) of Mamucium or Mancunium, established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand at "an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester attained city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, and the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

The city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station. At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917, Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948, and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first graphene in 2004.

The name Manchester originates from Mamucium, the Latin name for the city, or its variant Mancunio; its citizens are still referred to as Mancunians (/mænˈkjuːniən/). These names are generally thought to represent a Latinised version of an older Brittonic name. It is generally accepted that the etymology of the Brittonic name is from *mamm-, which means 'breast', in reference to a breast-shaped hill on which the city was built. However, more recent work suggests that the name could have instead come from the Brittonic *mamma, which means 'mother', in reference to a local river goddess. Both possible roots remain extant in Celtic languages today, with mam meaning 'breast' in Irish but the same word meaning 'mother' in Welsh. The suffix -chester is from Old English ceaster ('Roman fortification', itself a loanword from Latin castra, 'fort; fortified town'), and was first use after the end of Roman rule in Britain to describe places with former links to the Roman military.

Nicknames for the city that originated from its role in the Industrial Revolution include "warehouse city" and "cottonopolis". The city is widely known as 'the capital of the North' and is part of an ongoing dispute with the city of Birmingham as to which one is to be considered the unofficial second city of the United Kingdom, although only considering population Birmingham is bigger. The city is also infrequently referred to as 'Manny', especially by non-Mancunians, which is considered offensive by some residents of the city. The phrase was particularly popularised by rapper Bugzy Malone's use of the phrase "putting Manny on the map".

Although the name Manchester only officially applies to the metropolitan borough within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, it has been informally applied to various other areas over the years; examples include the "Manchester City Zone", "Manchester post town", and the "Manchester Congestion Charge", none of which simply cover the official confines of the city.

The first major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England were the Brigantes; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the bank of the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. In 79 AD, following their conquest of Britain, the Roman general Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium to ensure that Roman interests in Deva Victrix (now Chester) and Eboracum (now York) were protected from the Brigantes whose land they had occupied. Central Manchester has remained a continuously populated settlement since this time.

A fragment of foundations of the final version of the Mamucium fort is visible in Castlefield today. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. The fort was first investigated by archaeologists in 1906, and opened to the public in 1984.