Leeds Art Gallery opened its doors in 1888, the same year a Frenchman named Louis Le Prince pointed a camera at a Leeds garden and shot what is generally reckoned the world’s first moving pictures. A good year, then, for looking at things in Leeds.
The gallery holds a hefty collection of art from the 19th century and earlier, though its most memorable space may be the Victorian Tiled Hall, a glazed ceramic confection that now serves coffee beneath its arches. Outside, a bronze reclining woman by Henry Moore keeps watch over the square. Moore, born in nearby Castleford, studied in the city as a young man.
VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tour of Leeds, narrated by a newcomer just two weeks into city life, uses the gallery to introduce Moore and the glass-fronted sculpture institute next door, before heading up The Headrow, once medieval Leeds’s northern edge.