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In its Victorian heyday, BRADFORD was the world's biggest producer
of worsted cloth, its skyline etched black with mill chimneys, and its
hills clogged with some of the foulest back-to-back houses of any
northern city. Today, the city has left this nether world behind and is
valiantly laying on tourist attractions to rinse away its associations
with urban decrepitude. A few spruced-up buildings and the rejuvenation
of the late-Victorian woollen warehouse quarter, Little Germany, signify
an attempt to beautify the city centre.
The main interest is provided by the superb National Museum of
Photography, Film and Television (Tues-Sun & public holidays 10am-6pm;
free), one of the most visited national museums outside London. It has
recently emerged from a major refit, but still wraps itself around
Britain's largest cinema screen (52ft by 64ft), whose daily IMAX and 3-D
film screenings (£5.80) are billed as "so real you'll think you're
there". The museum's ground floor kicks off with the Kodak Gallery, a
museum-within-a-museum which houses the contents of Kodak's private
collection and traces the story of popular photography. Successive
floors are devoted to every nuance of film and television, including
some emphasis on state-of-the-art topics like digital imaging and
computer animation, and detours into subjects like advertising and
news-gathering.
A walk past the restored Venetian-Gothic Wool Exchange building on
Market Street provides ample evidence of the wealth of
nineteenth-century Bradford. Over to the east, north of Leeds Road, the
tight grid of streets that is Little Germany retains an enclave of
warehouse and office buildings in which transplanted German and Jewish
merchants once plied their wool trade. The buildings have enticed in new
businesses and community ventures, and at the Design Exchange , 34
Peckover St (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; free), the temporary art and design
exhibitions are usually worth a peek. The Peace Museum (Wed-Fri
11am-3pm, or by arrangement at other times, call 01274/754009; free),
hidden away on the top floor of 10 Piece Hall Yard, opposite the Wool
Exchange, is the only museum of its kind in the country, detailing the
history of the peace movement with some panache. The museum will be
rehoused in a purpose built International Peace Centre in 2003.
Finally, no one should pass up the chance to drop in on SALTAIRE , three
miles north of the city, a model industrial village and textile mill
built by the industrialist Sir Titus Salt, who built his fortune on the
innovative use of alpaca and mohair. Salt's Mill , built to emulate an
Italian palazzo and larger than St Paul's Cathedral in London, was the
biggest factory in the world when it opened in 1853. Its 1200 looms
produced over 30,000 yards of cloth a day, and the mill was surrounded
by schools, hospitals, a train station, parks, baths and wash-houses,
plus 45 almshouses and around 850 houses. Salt's Mill remains the
fulcrum of the village, its several floors now housing art, craft and
furniture shops, and a craft centre, but its enterprising centrepiece is
the 1853 Gallery (daily 10am-6pm; free; tel 01274/531163), an entire
floor of the old spinning shed given over to the world's largest
retrospective collection of the works of Bradford-born David Hockney .
Salt's Diner (tel 01274/530533) on the same floor has a Hockney-designed
logo, menu and crockery. Trains run to Saltaire from Bradford Forster
Square, as do buses #662-6 and #679 from the Interchange.
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