City Centre

Recently altered beyond all recognition by the introduction of a £1billion new retail and leisure development, Liverpool ONE, Liverpool’s city centre has definite spring in its step again. The controversial development saw a 42 acre slab of prime city centre land bought out by private developers Grosvenor: the largest private land-grab in the UK.

In five years this run-down, Blitz-bombed corner of town has been transformed into a modern pleasure zone comprising nearly 200 shops, a handful of hotels, cinema complex and European-style restaurant terrace. A wealth of international architects worked on the scheme to create a pleasing landscape of green parkland, striking stairways, bullishly impressive cathedrals to retail therapy and a new transport interchange. Dissenters are thin off the ground now – as Liverpool ONE has transformed Liverpool’s fortunes, and made the city centre a shopping hotspot again.

Elsewhere, Lord Street and Church Street offer a traditional high street fix, and Mathew Street is stag and hen (and Beatles) central – by day a great place to seek out independent fashions in the Cavern Quarter, by night a neon-lit web of shooters bars and gaudy basement dives.