Things to do in Birmingham

Neighborhood · North-west of the centre

A dense conservation area of Georgian and Victorian workshops where jewellery is still made, now layered with bars, coffee roasters and restored factory flats.

Local tip: The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter is a workshop that was locked up in 1981 and reopened untouched — tea cups still on the bench. It is the best small museum in the city and almost nobody outside Birmingham has heard of it.

Food · Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley

The stretch of Ladypool Road and Stoney Lane where the balti was invented in the 1970s — cooked and served in a pressed-steel bowl, eaten with naan.

Local tip: Most places are unlicensed, so bring your own. Order one balti between two with a family naan rather than a dish each; that is how it is designed to be eaten and how locals order it.

Landmark · City centre, west

The junction of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, restored into a waterside quarter of bars, the Symphony Hall and towpaths running out to the edge of the city.

Local tip: Walk the towpath west rather than sitting at Brindleyplace. Within twenty minutes you are past Ladywood and into an entirely different, quieter city — and you can keep going to Wolverhampton if you want.

Nature · Sutton Coldfield, north

One of Europe's largest urban parks — 2,400 acres of heath, woodland, seven lakes and wild ponies, inside the city boundary and on the train line.

Local tip: Get the train to Sutton Coldfield or Blake Street rather than driving; the car parks fill and the station approaches drop you straight onto the heath. In winter it is genuinely empty.

Culture · Immediately south-east of the centre

The old industrial quarter turned street-art, warehouse-venue and film-studio district, with the Custard Factory at its centre.

Local tip: The murals change constantly and there is no map worth trusting. Go on a Saturday afternoon, start at the Custard Factory and walk Floodgate Street and Gibb Street. Avoid weekday evenings — much of it is still a working industrial estate.

Nature · Moseley and Hall Green, south

A wet woodland and an eighteenth-century working watermill that Tolkien grew up beside and drew on for the Shire.

Local tip: The mill still grinds flour and the bog has boardwalks through genuinely old woodland. Most Tolkien pilgrims go to Oxford and never learn that the landscape came from suburban Birmingham.