Explore Nottingham

What to know before visiting Nottingham

Nottingham is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located 33 miles (53 km) south-east of Sheffield and 45 miles (72 km) north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham is the legendary home of Robin Hood and to the lace-making, bicycle and tobacco industries. The city is also the county town of Nottinghamshire and the settlement was granted its city charter in 1897, as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. In the 2021 Census, Nottingham had a reported population of 323,632. The wider conurbation, which includes many of the city's suburbs, has a population of 768,638. It is the largest urban area in the East Midlands and the second-largest in the Midlands. Its Functional Urban Area, the largest in the East Midlands, has a population of 919,484. The population of the Nottingham/Derby metropolitan area is estimated to be 1,610,000. The metropolitan economy of Nottingham is the seventh-largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $50.9 billion (2014). Aside from Birmingham, it is the only city in the Midlands to be ranked as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Nottingham is a major sporting centre and, in October 2015, was named 'Home of English Sport'. The National Ice Centre, Holme Pierrepont National Water Sports Centre and Trent Bridge international cricket ground are all based in or around the city, which is also the home of two professional football teams: Notts County, recognised as the world's oldest professional league club, and Nottingham Forest, famously two-time winners of the UEFA European Cup under Brian Clough and Peter Taylor in 1979 and 1980. The city has professional rugby, ice hockey and cricket teams; it also hosts the Aegon Nottingham Open, an international tennis tournament on the ATP and WTA tours. This accolade came just over a year after Nottingham was named as the UK's first City of Football. The city is served by Nottingham railway station and the Nottingham Express Transit tram system; its bus company, Nottingham City Transport, is the largest publicly owned bus network in England. In December 2015, Nottingham was named a 'City of Literature' by UNESCO, joining a list of 20 Cities of Literature. The title reflects Nottingham's literary heritage, with Lord Byron, D. H. Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe having links to the city, as well as a contemporary literary community, a publishing industry and a poetry scene. The city is served by three universities: the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University and the Nottingham campus of the University of Law; it hosts the highest concentration of higher education providers in the East Midlands. -Wikipedia