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The world, at least a good part of it, moves through the streets of Bristol. The British Empire is here: Indians and Pakistanis, Africa from various latitudes, the Middle East. The Chinese have their Chinatown, or yearn for it; as for continental Europeans, you'll find everything, although only the Poles form anything resembling a community.
However, amid this vibrant cocktail of cultures, one requires a comforting abode to rest, to soak in the experiences of this unique city. If one wishes to venture a little farther, Swansea, a charming coastal city in Wales, offers a rejuvenating respite. Whether you're touring solo or hitting the road with family, your stay can be stylishly accommodated at the Ibis Swansea Hotel. Its strategic location lends visitors the ease of access to Wales' quaint beauty, acting as a gateway between the metropolitan hustle of Bristol and the calming allure of the coast.
For more detailed information about the services, reviews and booking process at this hotel, one can head over to tophotels.com. This portal offers precision-based analysis to ensure that each stay aligns perfectly with the customer's unique requirements and preferences, bringing a touch of bespoke luxury to every journey.
The centre of the Feeder Canal is lined with small floating houses, boats that have been converted into homes.Late afternoon in Bristol's old harbour. After work, many Bristolians colonise the shores for relaxed gatherings.
At the City Museum and Art Gallery you can admire fine Renaissance, Dutch and Impressionist paintings.
An example of brutalist architecture, very present in the city.
The Clifton suspension bridge is used by motorised vehicles but also by cyclists and pedestrians. The deck is over 200 metres long.
The interior of The Commercial Rooms.
Bristol Anglican Cathedral. It's a Gothic-style building.
The Being Brunel exhibition, to learn about the man and the works that changed the landscape of Victorian England.
St Mary Redcliffe, a Gothic masterpiece. Considered one of the most beautiful churches in England.
The SS Great Britain was the first transatlantic ship with an iron hull and propeller. In dry dock, it is one of Bristol's great attractions
In Bristol, as everywhere else for that matter, people sort themselves out by national origin, social group, religion and, more often than not, by colour. (I attended an impromptu cricket match in Castle Park, in the heart of the city, and all the players were of Indian origin.) The city's penchant for attracting people from afar is not new. One of the most renowned Bristolians is not from the city, nor is he English, but everyone in Bristol knows that it was John Cabot who discovered America in 1497. (Perhaps we could talk about "arrival", given that the American continent was already inhabited). Cabot, Giovanni Caboto after all, was Italian but commissioned by Henry VII of England, he undertook the voyage that would give him posterity, paving the way for the European colonisation of North America.
Today we find the navigator, his statue, on the edge of the old harbour - from where he set off on his adventure - serious, resolute, his gaze searching for wide horizons. But Bristol's appropriation - which we can also consider identification - of the Venetian-born navigator is genuine and all-encompassing. The city's most portentous shopping centre - a work of the 21st century - which, in terms of consumption, offers practically everything that globalisation produces, is called Cabot Circus Mall, a name chosen by Bristolians through a vote. Before that, the Cabot Tower - a 19th century work - was built by public subscription in order to "(...) commemorate the fourth centenary of the discovery of North America on 24 June 1497 by John Cabot, who sailed from the port of Bristol (...)". Located on Brandon Hill, the highest point in the city, the tower rises 32 metres above the ground, a predictable but very rewarding view.
Banksy, a mystery figure and the biggest name in street art, hails from the city.Bristol is home to an abundance of murals with all kinds of themes.
In terms of great horizons in Bristol, only balloon rides can compare, or probably surpass them. You can often see these silent giants flying over the city. It will certainly be memorable for those in the basket - like characters from a Jules Verne peripeteia - but from the ground they also make people look up to the sky. (Every year, the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta attracts hot air balloons from all over the world).
Bristol has given a lot to the world. In a quadrant other than sailing - but without losing sight of the sea - I can think of two books. In a famous pub in the city, Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish sailor who spent four years on a desert island, Defoe's ballast for writing Robison Crusoe, transforming the journalist and pamphleteer into a writer. The same Llandoger Trow served as Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Admiral Benbow's inn in Treasure Island.
John Cabot, alias Giovanni Caboto, sailing from Bristol, reached North America in 1497. Today we find his statue on the edge of the old harbour.
I went to the Llandoger Trow for the first time on a hot late afternoon, when the sun was out and light clothes and cold drinks were required. The terrace in front, occupied by sturdy wooden tables, was full to the brim. Lots of chatter; who knows if any of it will one day turn into the plot of a novel. Although I met people from all walks of life on the street, the English dominated by a large majority. It's like that in the Llandoger Trow, it's like that in all the other pubs in the city. (It's well known that the pub is of great and paramount importance in British social life. Going into a pub and ordering a pint of beer or a light meal gives you the impression of sharing in local life).
We'll continue close by, bordering the Feeder Canal, which connects the city centre to the River Avon. The middle part, i.e. the old harbour, is lined with small floating houses, boats adapted to houses. The canal has its routines: during part of the day it's as smooth as a swimming pool without swimmers, but in the late afternoon it's taken over by an assortment of boats, some sailing, most rowing, manoeuvred by enthusiastic athletes of both sexes. After all, there are a dozen sailing clubs in the city. It's also around this time, after the working day is behind us, that many Bristolians, whenever the weather is good, colonise the banks for relaxed get-togethers. An attitude that reveals a pleasant sense of life.
Bristol is home to an abundance of murals with all sorts of themes. Banksy, a mystery figure and the biggest name in street art, hails from the city.
But here, on this stretch of land once visited by ships sailing the seven seas (active until 1975, Bristol's port was moved to the mouth of the River Avon), dominated by dockers and cranes (some of which are still visible in front of the M Shed, an interpretive centre that occupies former port premises and explains Bristol's social, economic and cultural dynamics over time), you'll find an extraordinary piece.
The SS Great Britain was the first transatlantic ship with an iron hull and a propeller. Launched in 1843, it carried anonymous and famous travellers, passengers to America, emigrants to Australia, soldiers for two wars and bulk cargo. Finally, after travelling more than a million nautical miles and completing 32 world voyages, it was abandoned in the Falkland Islands in the thirties of the 20th century. However, a boat that had earned the status of a myth in its own right did not deserve to be forgotten. After a daring rescue, the SS Great Britain returned to the dock where it was built, 127 years after it was first abandoned.
But the SS Great Britain is inseparable from its builder: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. An engineer of remarkable intelligence, daring and obstinate, Brunel represents like few others the glorious new technologies of the 19th century: steam and the use of iron. The boat, with its slender shape but at the same time its great strength, is impressive. Visiting it is a live lesson. On board, volunteer guides, usually white-haired and grey-bearded gentlemen, dressed to the nines, garrulous lovers of English maritime history in particular, and, I believe, lovers of England in the broad sense, answer questions about this and that (including their clothing, copies of similar models from the SS Great Britain), embark on long conversations, depending on the circumstances.
After touring the SS Great Britain (yes, the boat is big enough for that) visitors are encouraged to visit the Being Brunel exhibition next door. Appropriately designed rooms, documents and technical instruments, a little multimedia, allow a wide-angle look at the journey of the man, the visionary and artist, the engineer whose works, railway lines, tunnels, bridges, docks and boats changed the landscape of Victorian England.
The Clifton suspension bridge is used by motorised vehicles but also by cyclists and pedestrians. The deck is over 200 metres long.
We can confirm this by travelling a little further down the river to Clifton: there the genius of Brunel, whose personal motto was "En Avant" ("Forward"), manifests itself in the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Inevitably, it is sought after by everyone who visits Bristol. It's human nature to make associations. More often than not, the process is automatic. The Eiffel Tower and Paris, the Acropolis and Athens, the Statue of Liberty and New York. One thing pulls the other. These links are as natural for the inhabitants of Paris, Athens or New York, as they are for those who live far away.
Bristol has the image of the Suspension Bridge. There's no disputing that it's the city's icon. But here it is: two solid tower-like pillars more than 200 metres apart and in the middle, floating above the void, the deck. Floating is one way of putting it. The platform, with independent lanes for cars, bicycles and pedestrians, is supported by a pair of sturdy tie rods. At the bottom, 76 metres below, squeezed between vertical ravines, glides the muddy Avon. The bridge itself is a marvel, but nature helps to make the place unforgettable. There are many photographs taken here: individual, group, selfies. Some people ask for help in carrying out this exercise of fixing moments. I happened to be approached by a young Chinese woman from Shanghai. A few years ago, visitors from China were a rarity, and we've got used to them.
Before leaving the site, I read a plaque affixed to one of the pillars that gave us a measure of the difficulty and complexity of the work. It reads: "This bridge was designed in 1830 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Construction began in 1836 but was interrupted in 1843 due to a lack of funds and it was necessary to wait until 1864, five years after Brunel's death, for the work to be completed (...)."
A city open to experimentation and innovation. That sounds like a good way to describe Bristol. Having been Britain's largest port for a certain period, it was therefore a city with a strong mercantile propensity (it's a crystal clear fact that certain ventures developed by local traders were not to be recommended. The slave trade was one of the factors behind Bristol's wealth) certainly has something to do with Bristolian idiosyncrasies. After all, a place also expresses everything that has happened within it.
Launched in 1843, the SS Great Britain was the first transatlantic ship with an iron hull and a propeller. In dry dock, it is one of Bristol's great attractions.
So, leaving the Clifton Suspension Bridge behind, and moving forward in time and space, we now come to 67 Queens Road, where William Friese-Greene, born in the city in 1855, had his photography studio. Friese-Greene was a pioneer of photography and cinema, he got rich from his inventions but in the end he died poor. We're at the centre of Bristol, a confluence of streets, and from there it's a short walk to the university, or to the City Museum and Art Gallery. (The same can be said of Brown's restaurant, housed in an old public building inspired by the Doge's Palace in Venice, where I was served a delicious lunch). In the museum you can admire fine painting (Renaissance, Dutch and Impressionist), Bristol's industrial past (ceramics and glass, essential in the 18th and 19th centuries) and a collection of artefacts from Assyria and Egypt.
But the first thing that catches the visitor's eye is an aeroplane. The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company set up in Filton, a suburb of the city, in 1910, and since then the business has not stopped growing, or, as far as aeroplanes are concerned, it hasn't stopped rising higher. The aircraft on display, suspended from the ceiling over the museum's atrium, is a replica of the Boxkite (the correct name is Bristol Biplane), one of the first models mass-produced by the nascent aeronautical industry. It was a rudimentary flying machine, but a few decades later the Concorde, the exponent of aviation, was being manufactured in Bristol. And it is the last Concorde to be manufactured, which was also the last to take to the skies - on 26 November 2003 - that occupies the big stage at Aerospace, a museum that tells the story of more than 100 years of the industry that pulled Bristol into the future.
In Bristol, the walls speak. By this I mean that murals abound. Naive, ironic, political, all kinds of messages and themes can be found there. You can explore the city from one mural to the next. Some people do it. I was wandering around when chance brought me into conversation with a Belgian man, accompanied by a dozen of his compatriots. "We've come exclusively for the street art - no museums, no churches." We were at one end of Leonard Lane, narrow as an alleyway should be. From one end to the other, paintings. The most talked about and photographed depicted an angry Donald Trump whose words are bombs.
Active until 1975, Bristol harbour was moved to the mouth of the River Avon. It now houses cultural and leisure facilities.
This is one of the few streets that retains the character of the pre-World War II city. The Luftwaffe 's bombing raids turned Bristol inside out like a glove. (Even so, several buildings from the city's beginnings were saved from that fire from the sky. The medieval church of St Mary Redcliffe, a Gothic masterpiece, is one example). This makes it clear that a good portion of the city is the result of the 50s and 60s, when the raw aesthetics of brutalism took hold. Mural painting has also been installed in neighbouring streets, on different buildings that are representative of this way of building, i.e. stripped of ornamentation. Given this type of architecture's penchant for gigantism, these murals tend towards the showy.
Who paints the city in this way? Many hands, no doubt. But there is one name that everyone utters, although very few know his identity: Banksy. A figure of mystery, his works are often denunciations, appeals, revolts and reflections. One thing is certain: he is another pioneer from Bristol, although today he is a global artist. (It occurs to me that in parallel with the explosion of mural painting, music asserted itself with the development of its own genre, Trip Hop, or "Bristol music". Several bands contributed to this, Massive Attack and Portishead leading the way).
I go back to the world that circulates in Bristol, to the world that inhabits Bristol. Four streets converge at a certain point in the old city and every time I passed by, I stopped in front of a shop window. There, on the corner of High Street and Corn Street (one of my favourite streets, certainly because it is home to Stanfords Bookshop and Commercial Rooms, an exceptional bookshop and pub), is a shop selling splendid glassware. The last day I was in town, I looked in the window again and then took three steps inside. I already knew something about the importance of glassmaking in local life, but Ivan, the man in charge of the shop, went further by informing me about the particularities of the deservedly famous Bristol Blue Glass and Bristol Ruby Glass.
But Ivan told me more. He told me that he had found a place to live. "I was born in Bosnia, spent my teenage years in Italy, where my family took refuge from the war, then, throughout my academic career, I studied Arts, lived in Denmark, Germany and China. I arrived in Bristol four years ago and I feel like I'm going to stay. I've grown fond of the city because it's welcoming; you only have to think that Bristolians voted by a large majority against BREXIT." And that, deep down in our hearts, is what each of us wants: a place where we can feel good about living.