Things to do in Coventry

Landmark · City centre, Priory Street

The roofless shell of the fourteenth-century cathedral destroyed in the raid of 14 November 1940, standing beside Basil Spence's 1962 replacement with Graham Sutherland's tapestry and Epstein's St Michael on the wall outside.

Local tip: Go into the ruins first. The morning after the bombing the cathedral stonemason wired two charred roof beams into a cross and someone chalked 'Father Forgive' on the wall behind the altar — not 'forgive them'. That decision, made in 1940 in a flattened city, is why Coventry became the world's first town-twinning city and why it twinned with Dresden. The new cathedral is superb 1960s architecture, but it only means anything after the ruins.

Culture · Millennium Place, city centre

The largest publicly owned collection of British road transport in the world, free to enter, holding Thrust2 and ThrustSSC — the two cars that took the world land speed record past the sound barrier.

Local tip: It is free, which people do not believe, and the collection is enormous because Coventry made bicycles, then motorcycles, then cars, in that order and in that place. ThrustSSC is still the fastest car ever driven and it is sitting in a municipal museum in the middle of England. Go on a weekday and you will have it nearly to yourself.

Neighborhood · Far Gosford Street, east of the ring road

A creative quarter of independent shops, record stores, breweries and street food in a set of converted industrial units, with the Coventry Canal Basin and the towpath a short walk away.

Local tip: This is where the independent side of the city actually is, rather than in the rebuilt precinct. The Coventry Canal starts at the Basin and runs north — the towpath is flat, off-road and takes you out of the city past Longford to Hawkesbury Junction, which is the best walk or cycle from the centre.

Culture · West of the city centre, beside the ring road

A short street of timber-framed medieval buildings — some original to the site, some carefully moved there in the 1970s — surviving from the city that the Blitz and the rebuild otherwise erased.

Local tip: Coventry was one of the great medieval English cities, richer than most and with more surviving timber framing than almost anywhere until November 1940. Spon Street is what is left, plus the Guildhall of St Mary near the cathedral, which is one of the finest medieval guildhalls in the country and is routinely missed.

Nature · Kenilworth Road, south of the centre

A 121-acre park laid out in the 1920s in memory of the city's First World War dead, with mature avenues, a memorial obelisk, sports pitches and the Godiva Festival each summer.

Local tip: It is the city's main green space and it is genuinely good — big enough to lose the traffic noise, and on the walking route out toward Warwick University and Kenilworth. The Godiva Festival in the park is free and one of the largest free festivals in the country.

Culture · London Road, on the River Sherbourne south-east of the centre

A fourteenth-century Carthusian priory, restored and reopened to the public, containing rare medieval wall paintings including a Crucifixion, set in seventy acres of heritage park along the river.

Local tip: It survived the Reformation by becoming a private house, then a school, and it holds wall paintings of a quality that would be a headline attraction in a cathedral city. It reopened after a long restoration and is still barely known even inside Coventry. The park around it is free and connects to the river walk.