Royal Hotel, Birmingham

The Great Western Arcade (grid reference SP070871) is a covered Grade II listed Victorian shopping arcade lying between Colmore Row and Temple Row in Birmingham City Centre, England. It was built (1875-6) over the Great Western Railway line cutting at the London end of Snow Hill station. The cutting was covered in 1874. Originally the broad gauge Paddington line ran through a tunnel which stopped at Temple Row and then an open cutting to Snow Hill station. The cutting was roofed over in 1874 and the Great Western Arcade built on top, the line of the new 'tunnel' being offset slightly to the north of the centre of the arcade. The extended tunnel has a length of 596 yards (545 m). The arcade was designed by W. H. Ward of Paradise Street, Birmingham. The arcade has entrances at each end: the one at Temple Row is ornate, unlike the modern reworking at Colmore Row, opposite the entrance to the station. The arcade's roof was originally a glazed semi-circular barrel vault with a glazed central dome, similar to that of the Gallerio Vittoria Emmanuele in Milan which was constructed at the same time. It was destroyed during World War II and has been replaced. The arcade, containing shops on both sides, has a clock which strikes the quarters on a set of five exposed bells.

Bull Street tram stop is a tram stop on the West Midlands Metro tram system serving Bull Street in the Birmingham city centre, England. Construction started in June 2012, and it was opened on 6 December 2015, becoming the first stop of the city-centre extension to open, and the first on-street tram stop to operate in Birmingham since the closure of the Birmingham Corporation Tramways in 1953, and the temporary southern terminus of the service. The rest of the extension to Grand Central was opened on 30 May 2016, and then onto Edgbaston Village in July 2022. Work started on a new line to Birmingham Moor Street in 2022 which will be gradually extended to the eventual terminus at Birmingham Airport. To allow for the new connection to be made it became necessary to temporarily terminate all trams at Bull Street.

St. Philip's Parish Library, also known as the Higgs Library, was a public library attached to St Philip's Church in Birmingham, England between 1733 and 1927.The library was founded in 1733 by St. Philip's first rector William Higgs and was based around his own collection of books, supplemented by purchases paid for from a bequest of £200. Unlike Birmingham's earliest public library, founded between 1635 and 1642, or the later Birmingham Library of 1779 – both of which were largely dissenting institutions – Higgs' Library was associated with the established Church of England. Advertised as "free to all clergymen in the town and neighbourhood", it was also open to laymen with the permission of the rectors of St. Philips or of Birmingham's original parish of St Martin in the Bull Ring.The library moved in 1792 to a room adjoining the parsonage in St. Philip's churchyard. A catalogue of 1795 shows that by then the library had acquired a wide range of books on philosophy, history, economics, education and literary criticism, as well as the expected range of theological and ecclesiastical literature.The library was closed in 1927, with 300 volumes from its collection being presented to Birmingham Central Library and 150 volumes being presented to Queen's College, Edgbaston.

Corporation Street is a main shopping street in Birmingham city centre, England. It runs from the law courts at its northern end to the centre of New Street at its southern.

Colmore Gate is an office and retail building in Birmingham, England. An example of early 1990s architecture by the Seymour Harris Partnership, the lift shaft is on the outside of the building and the windows are tinted a dark blue colour. The design blends a traditional look with modern materials and style. It is situated in the heart of the business district of Birmingham. The building is home to many large companies. The building sits on the former footprint of the old Greys department store, torn down by PJ Murray Haulage in the 1980s. The building was constructed after the developers bought the patch of land off another developing company whilst they were constructing a building there. The structure of a building was on the site and it was taken down before construction of Colmore Gate began.

Corporation Street is a tram stop on Line 1 of the West Midlands Metro serving Corporation Street, a major thoroughfare in Birmingham City Centre, England. Government approval for the extension from Snow Hill to Grand Central was given on 16 February 2012. It was opened on 30 May 2016.The stop only has a shelter on the northbound side. The southbound side has no shelter presumably because at the time it was the penultimate stop before the terminus at Grand Central.

Martineau Place is a shopping centre located in the city centre of Birmingham, England. It contains a mixture of shops and restaurants, with the emphasis on food and drink which is located on the roofs of the shops. Retailers include Sainsbury's, Deichmann, Boots, Argos and Poundland, the upper levels of the centre include a 168-room hotel. It is located on land bounded by High Street, Union Street, Bull Street and Corporation Street, with primary retail frontages on all these streets. It is directly opposite the House of Fraser department store, formerly known as Rackhams. The Martineau Way pedestrian route runs through the centre of Martineau Place, and includes further retail frontages. This also connects the Centre to main thoroughfare New Street (via Union Passage) and to the separate Priory Square shopping centre (via Dalton Way).

Omega Sektor was a computer gaming centre brand, which previously owned two venues in the UK. One smaller venue was based in Harrow, the other on Corporation Street in Birmingham. The Birmingham venue claimed to be the largest of its kind in the Europe. The centre cost approximately £4 million and opened its doors to the public on Saturday 11 August 2007, with a VIP opening day on the 10th. The building was previously occupied by Virgin Megastores. The centre occupied 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) and contained consoles including one PlayStation 3 (which is mainly used for tournaments) and Xbox 360s in addition to over 250 high-spec PCs. The centre also included an internet café, a VIP room for private events, large plasma screens and projectors scattered around the centre and a sound-proof room where music videos were displayed.

The Priory or Hospital of St Thomas of Canterbury was a house of Augustinian canons in medieval Birmingham. The institution is referred to in sources as either a priory or a hospital, but the two roles were often overlapping or interchangeable during the medieval period, as all monastic institutions were supposed to care for the poor, sick and itinerant. The priory was situated north of Bull Street - then called Chapel Street after the priory's chapel of St Mary - in an extensive tract of its own land that extended as far as the Prior's rabbit warren or conygre, now marked by Congreve Street near Chamberlain Square. The date of the priory's foundation is unknown, but numerous later records suggest that it was established by a member of the de Birmingham family. The first record of the priory occurs in 1286, when gifts of property from three local land-owners were licensed to be held in mortmain; and a pardon issued in 1310 for the failure to similarly license thirty-three other donations of land suggests that the priory was thriving at this time. In 1344, however, its management was severely criticised by a visitation, and it was extensively reformed by the Bishop of Lichfield. This seems to have been effective and resulted in a further series of endowments, including the establishment of a chantry in its chapel.The priory was dissolved in 1536 with the banning of smaller institutions at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The chapel survived ten years beyond the priory's dissolution to support its chantry, until it too was dissolved in 1546-1547. The priory's estate was sold and redeveloped as Old Square. Large numbers of human bones were found during the development of the priory's land for housing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including some found to the south of Bull Street which may suggest either that a second graveyard existed south of Bull Street, or that the original line of Bull Street may itself have lain further to the south. This has been taken by some historians to indicate that the chapel may have been the original church of Birmingham and preceded the establishment of St Martin in the Bull Ring, though other historians doubt this.

The Cathedral Church of Saint Philip is the Church of England cathedral and the seat of the Bishop of Birmingham. Built as a parish church in the Baroque style by Thomas Archer, it was consecrated in 1715. Located on Colmore Row in central Birmingham, St Philip's became the cathedral of the newly formed Diocese of Birmingham in 1905. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.

The Grand Hotel is a Grade II* listed Victorian five star hotel in the city centre of Birmingham, England. The hotel occupies the greater part of a block bounded by Colmore Row, Church Street, Barwick Street and Livery Street and overlooks St Philip's Cathedral and churchyard. Designed by architect Thomson Plevins, construction began in 1875 and the hotel opened in 1879. Extensions and extensive interior renovations were undertaken by prominent Birmingham architecture firm Martin & Chamberlain from 1890 to 1895. Interior renovations included the building of the Grosvenor Room with Louis XIV style decoration. The hotel closed in 2002 and due to the risk of crumbling stonework where it remained under scaffolding and protective covers for ten years. In 2012 planning permission was granted for plans to restore the building into a luxury hotel. Works to the exterior began in October 2012 and completed in 2021. The hotel reopened in May 2021 with 185 bedrooms, two new bars and a restaurant, a gymnasium, meeting rooms, collaboration areas, and event spaces.

The Exchange was a large and prominent Victorian commercial building in central Birmingham, England, on the corner of New Street and Stephenson Place. It was among the many Victorian buildings lost during the 1960s redevelopment of Birmingham.