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Manchester is a city in the north of England, nearby Liverpool.
In one of the highlights of Manchester, the Chetham's library, are kept Robert Southey's Letters of Espriella in which says of Manchester that ‘a place more destitute of all interest it is impossible to conceive’. It does not seem to make much of an impression on many, but it can make several claims of importance and relevance, starting with being the world's first big industrial city (with the textile manufacture). Today it remains a global city (where it is classified as β- while Birmingham for instance is only γ+). Its architecture is of varying quality and it is not the most pleasant city to walk around. It has some nice brick buildings, including the Midland hotel, an impressive Edwardian Baroque building, where Rolls & Royce met to form their company. It was also a favorite of Hitler who knew it for its architecture and this area of the town was allegedly spared bombing not to damage it.
We visited it in April (2018) (Fabrice did pass by once in 2017 in a failed attempt to get a Chinese visa; on our second visit, which was with Camilo, he also tried to get a Chinese visa, and also failed).
Chetham's Library might be the most important spot of Manchester. Founded 1653 in a 1421 building, is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. It holds over 120000 volumes of printed books an other documents. Unlike the time of Chetham, would instructed ‘to require nothing of any man that cometh into the library’, its visit is today strictly regulated.
Marx and Engels used to meet there, in the window seat that you see on the left in this picture above, where they developed the Communist Manifesto. In a letter to Marx, Engels remember:
The stained glass is gone but the rest stayed there. The guide also mentioned a meeting of Cromwell on the roundtable, but I could find no other mention of that.