The city of Leeds boasts the finest of architecture. The buildings, along with the railway stations, were the cathedrals of Victorian Britain and a statement of civic pride in the growing industrial towns of the north. We will start this online walking tour from Leeds Town Hall and head to the Leeds City Art Gallery and Henry Moore Institute. With its international piano festival, Opera North, Theatre, and Art College, Leeds is the cultural capital of Yorkshire.

Moving ahead, we will walk through some of the city’s famous shopping arcades including Thorntons, the first to be built in 1877. Then we will reach Briggate, the famous shopping street where the city started as a small town by a bridge on the River Aire in the early 1200s. Across this pedestrianized street we enter the Victorian Arcades. These are said to be some of the finest in Britain and are lined with upmarket shops fitted to the sumptuous architecture. 

Out on the other side and across Vicar Lane we have the Kirkgate Markets. Indoors and outdoors, these are said to make up the largest market in Europe. It is at this place where Michael Marks of Marks and Spencer started his business. On his stall, he had a sign: ‘Don’t ask the price: it’s a penny’.

From the open market at the back, we will be able to see the performing arts quarter including the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Northern Ballet. Also here is the enormous Quarry House, the headquarters of the National Health Service and nicknamed ‘the Kremlin’. 

Next, we visit the Leeds Corn Exchange where wheat was once bought and sold. It has a rare oval-shaped dome and is now a boutique shopping centre, another place to shelter from sometimes troublesome Yorkshire weather. We will be close to an area named 'Calls', a district full of bars and clubs that come to life at night. On the other side of this small quarter is Leeds Bridge, which has existed since the 1200s. 

After crossing the bridge, we will have the option of choosing a direction. On one side we have the famous Tetley Brewery and the Royal Armouries, a national museum of armour and weapons moved here from the Tower of London in the 1990s, while on the other side we will have the opportunity to walk along the River Aire to Holbeck, an old industrial quarter now restored with some of the city’s finest industrial architecture like the TempleWorks which has what was once the largest room in the world.