Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in England with a population of 510,700 (2012 est.) It lies within the United Kingdom's second most populous urban area which has a population of 2.55 million. Manchester is located in the south-central part of North West England.

The city is notable for its architecture, culture, music scene, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Known through time as a hotbed for radical ideas, Manchester was the site of the world's first railway station and is where scientists first split the atom, and developed the first stored-program computer. Manchester is also regarded as the birthplace of Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, and both capitalism and communism.[9] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began to write the Communist Manifesto at Chetham Library, the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, after London and Edinburgh.