Manchester International Festival

Blackfriars Bridge is a stone arch bridge in Greater Manchester, England. Completed in 1820, it crosses the River Irwell, connecting Salford to Manchester. It replaced an earlier wooden footbridge, built in 1761 by a company of comedians who performed in Salford, and who wanted to grant patrons from Manchester access to their theatre. The old bridge was removed in 1817. The new design, by Thomas Wright of Salford, was completed in June 1820, and opened on 1 August that year. The bridge is built from sandstone and uses three arches to cross the river. To obscure the then badly polluted river from view, at some point in the 1870s its original stone balustrade was replaced with cast iron. In 1991 this was replaced with stone-clad reinforced concrete. The Act of Parliament that enabled its construction allowed for its owners to charge a toll for crossing the bridge, but this arrangement was brought to an end in March 1848. Blackfriars Bridge was declared a Grade II listed building in 1988.

The Moon Under Water is a pub in Manchester city centre, in the building of the former Deansgate Picture House cinema (an ABC cinema) on Deansgate; it is one of the largest public houses in the United Kingdom. The pub is 8,800 square feet (820 m2) and can hold 1,700 customers. It is owned by the pub chain JD Wetherspoon who opened it as a public house on 15 August 1995, and is named after George Orwell's essay, "The Moon Under Water", describing his ideal pub; it is one of several Wetherspoon pubs with the same name.

Arkwright House is a Grade-II listed building in Manchester, England. Designed by local architects, Harry S. Fairhurst, it was completed by 1937 for the English Sewing Cotton Company. Arkwright House is built in a neo-classical style with some art deco motifs which was widely prominent during the 1930s. Arkwright House was heavily damaged in the 1992 Manchester bombing and needed work to repair the building. It is marked by it giant Corinthian order columns and the use of Portland stone as the exterior. The building has been described as 'sinister' by one architecture critic, suggesting it shares some similarities with Nazi architecture where classical buildings were preferred. Hartwell describes the front façade facing Parsonage Gardens as architecturally 'impressive'.

Barton Arcade is a Victorian shopping arcade in Manchester, England, located between Deansgate and St Ann's Square. The arcade was listed as a Grade II* listed building on the 25 January 1972. The listing includes the "block of shops (Barton's Building) and offices enclosing the arcades." It was constructed by Corbett, Raby and Sawyer in 1871. Hartwell describes the Barton's Building facade as "utterly ignorant.. the ground floor pilasters must be seen to be believed." The arcade, however, is "a gorgeous glass and iron shopping arcade with glass domes..., the best example of this type of cast-iron and glass arcade anywhere in the country." The entrance to the arcade on St Ann's Square incorporates a large, cast iron and glass wall. The two entrances on Deansgate are hidden behind the Barton Building. The building is of "four storeys with an attic, a long nine-bay facade to Deansgate, divided in half horizontally by a balustraded balcony". The structure is composed of cast iron and glass. The iron work was supplied by the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow. The building was one of the first to be built on the newly widened Deansgate. The arcade was restored in the 1980s. The original shop fronts and decorative floor no longer exist.The building sustained damage and the dome was shattered during the Manchester Blitz in December 1940. In 1957 the Barton Arcade was sold privately for a sum "in the region of £200,000" for 12 shops and three floors of offices and showrooms. It was bought by an insurance company and Town and City Properties Ltd. The total net floor area was 55,000 sq ft and in 1957 the rent roll was about £17,000 a year. It is named after its original developer.

Kendals is the previous name of a department store in Manchester, England. Since 2005, the store now operates as House of Fraser. The store had previously been known during its operation as Kendal Milne, Kendal, Milne & Co, Kendal, Milne & Faulkner, Harrods or Watts.

The Circle Club is a private members' club in central Manchester, England. It is owned by Northern Quarter-based clothing company Ringspun, who also hold various parties at the venue. Originally set up to serve those working in the city's growing media industry, the club underwent a change of management and relaxed its membership criteria in 2008 to those working in professional services. However, it is still most often frequented by those involved in media and fashion, by virtue of the events it holds. The Club was announced in late 2013 to close in December. Unusually, the exterior of the club carries no signage and is not apparent to passers-by. It is accessible via an unmarked dark green door on the Barton Square alleyway, close to Barton Arcade. It has been the venue for a number of notable events in the city in recent times, including debates featuring leaders of Manchester and Salford city councils, Ian Simpson (architect of the Beetham Tower) as well as parties for Channel M television programmes and the Miss Manchester beauty pageant.

North Tower (formerly Highland House) is a high-rise residential building on Victoria Bridge Street in Salford, England. The building is 23 storeys tall with a podium at the base, which gives it a total height of 80 m (260 ft), making it one of the tallest buildings in Salford. The building is in the City of Salford, just north of the River Irwell and less than 100 m (330 ft) from Manchester Cathedral on the other side of the river. The top 12 floors contain 96 apartments, with the lower 10 used as a Premier Inn hotel.

No. 1 Deansgate is the name and location of a medium-rise apartment building in central Manchester, England. It is the tallest all-steel residential building in the United Kingdom, and one of the most expensive addresses in Manchester. The building was completed in 2002, and is situated at the north end of Deansgate close to Manchester Cathedral.

Victoria Bridge is a stone arch bridge in Greater Manchester, England. Completed in 1839 and named after Queen Victoria, it crosses the River Irwell, connecting Salford to Manchester. The bridge replaced an earlier medieval structure, Salford Old Bridge, which dated from the 14th century. The old bridge was built on the site of an ancient ford, from which Salford took its name. Contemporary accounts of its design are complimentary, but by the 19th century its narrow construction was viewed as an impediment to traffic, and it was demolished. Construction of the new bridge began in 1838 and it was completed about a year later, at a cost of about £20,800. It was opened to traffic on 20 June 1839, although Queen Victoria did not visit it until October 1851. Victoria Bridge is made from sandstone, and uses a single semi-elliptical arch of about 100 feet to cross the water below. It was declared a Grade II listed building in 1988.

St Ann's Church is a Church of England parish church in Manchester, England. Although named after St Anne, it also pays tribute to the patron of the church, Ann, Lady Bland. St Ann's Church is a Grade I listed building.

The Victoria Arches are a series of bricked-up arches built in an embankment of the River Irwell in Manchester. They served as business premises, landing stages for steam packet riverboats and as Second World War air-raid shelters. They were accessed from wooden staircases that descended from Victoria Street.Regular flooding resulted in the closure of the steam-packet services in the early 20th century, and the arches were later used for general storage. Following the outbreak of the Second World War they were converted into air-raid shelters. They are now bricked up and inaccessible, the staircases having been removed in the latter part of the 20th century.

King Street is one of the most important thoroughfares of Manchester city centre, England. For much of the 20th century it was the centre of the north-west banking industry but it has become progressively dominated by upmarket retail instead of large banks.