Be it Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas or soothing green spaces and graffiti-covered alleys, this mighty city never falls short. Here’s a sneak peek!
One of the most curious cities in the UK, Bristol is Southwest England’s shining star.
Bristol started off as a small town called Brigg Stow, the earliest reference to which can be found in an Anglo-Saxon chronicle from 1051.
From late 1600s to early 1800s, Bristol was a major center for England’s maritime trade in tobacco, wine, cotton, and slaves.
The legendary pirate Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard, was from Bristol. His birth home, in fact, still stands on the city’s harborside.
Until 1840, Bristol has its own separate time zone. Its clocks used to run 10 minutes behind those of London. However, with the introduction of railways, time throughout the UK had to be regimented.
Bristol is the birthplace of Bungee Jumping. The world got a new adventure sport when on 1 April 1979, Oxford University’s Dangerous Sports Club’s member bungee jumped from the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The world’s largest manufacturer of hot air balloons is Bristol. In fact, the city also has its own festival to celebrate the hot air balloons it makes!
Not only the first solid chocolate bar was created in Bristol in 1847, but the city also boasts the creation of the first ever Chocolate Easter Egg back in 1873.
In 2008, Bristol was declared as UK’s first ever cycling city. Post this, the city received the grant of £10m for the creation of more biking lanes.
Col Needham created IMDb in 1990 while working as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol.
The Bristol Pound, the city’s very own currency, was launched in 2012. Intended to keep money into the local economy, the currency was an instant success in the Bristol County.
In 2009, Dorling Kindersley listed Bristol as one of the world’s top 10 cities for international travel.
In 2014 and 2017, Bristol was named the best city to live in Britain by Sunday Times, and in 2015, it earned the EU's European Green Capital Award.