Things to do in Newcastle upon Tyne

Landmark · City centre

A sweep of 1830s classical stone streets built speculatively by Richard Grainger — Grey Street curves down towards the river and is regularly voted the finest street in England.

Local tip: Walk it downhill from Grey's Monument in the evening when the stone goes gold. The Theatre Royal's portico halfway down is the best place to stand, and almost everybody photographs the street from the wrong end.

Culture · Both banks of the Tyne

Seven bridges in one view, a converted flour mill housing the Baltic contemporary art gallery, and Norman Foster's glass music centre on the Gateshead side.

Local tip: Baltic is free and its top-floor viewing box gives the best sightline down the river. The Sage Gateshead was renamed The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in 2024, so half the signage and every older guide still calls it the wrong thing.

Food · City centre, off Grainger Street

An 1835 Grade I listed covered market of butchers, fishmongers, grocers and tiny kitchens, still a working food market rather than a food hall.

Local tip: The original Marks & Spencer Penny Bazaar stall is still here and still trading — the oldest surviving one anywhere, though the company itself began in Leeds. Buy a stottie from one of the bakeries and get it filled with ham and pease pudding; that is the local lunch and it costs almost nothing.

Nightlife · A mile east of the centre, below Byker

A steep post-industrial valley of railway arches and old warehouses turned into music venues, breweries, artists' studios, a city farm and the national children's books centre.

Local tip: The Cluny is the venue everyone names, but the valley works best as a walk — start at the Ouseburn Farm, go up past Seven Stories and end on the Free Trade Inn's back steps, which have the finest view of the bridges in the city and cost nothing.

Nature · Twenty-five minutes east on the Metro

A priory ruin on a headland, a mile of proper surfing beach, and a village of independent shops and a Sunday market in the station itself.

Local tip: This is the thing to test before you decide about the city: get the Metro from Monument to Tynemouth after work and see how short it is. The station's Victorian ironwork market on Saturdays and Sundays is worth the trip on its own, and Longsands has a surf school running year-round.

Nature · An hour north-west, around Kielder

The largest area of protected night sky in Europe — 1,500 square kilometres of moorland and forest with formal dark sky designation and an observatory in the middle of it.

Local tip: Go on a clear, moonless winter night and go early — the road in is unlit and slow. You can see the Milky Way with your eyes from a layby, and most people who live an hour away in Newcastle have never made the drive.