Valentine’s Day Tour
Demi Sheridan, Editorial AssistantBook now
Valentine's Day Tour
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Manchester has perfected that brave face, tough exterior, projecting a sense of power and confidence that all its inhabitants are proud to be a part of. But scratch the surface a little and you’ll find that this city has always been fuelled by romance, obsession and desire.
This Valentine’s Day, join Jonathan Schofield’s special walking tour and discover the stories of love, adventure and peril. You think Paris is the city of love? Just wait.
The tour begins outside the People’s History Museum and travels through the central Manchester streets. Areas that have witnessed scandalous affairs, passionate rendezvous’ and lives lived on the edge. Love, in its many forms, has shaped this city as much as the industrial boom and controversial politics.
Secret relationships, forbidden desire and a hidden sexual underworld, all existed
As the tour delves deeper, the city’s lesser known romantic and tragic history takes the stage. The Victorian morality tale of Lavinia Robinson, commonly referred to as The Manchester Ophelia, is one that details still astonish to this day. Robinson disappeared the day before her wedding in December 1813, only to be discovered weeks later, frozen in time, against the Irwell river bank.
Madame Malibran, the Spanish opera singer, whose short but brilliant career came to a fatal end during a Manchester performance. The beautiful and talented Malibran collapsed on the stage at the Manchester Music Festival and died at age 28.
Robinson and Malibran’s stories are just two of many more encased within Manchester’s façade. Secret relationships, forbidden desire and a hidden sexual underworld, all existed in the shadows of polite society.
This tour is not to uncover Manchester’s darkest secrets, but to remind you of the danger, double lives, pleasure and peril that were all once intertwined with the upper crust of the city. It also sets out to find moments of tenderness and courage. We all know love is an unruly force, more than capable of inspiring both noble acts and devastating consequences, but that’s what makes it so interesting.
