Bristol

Bristol has always done things its own way. While other cities were building cathedrals, Bristol was building ships. While others were tearing down the past, Bristol was painting over it, Banksy's stencils still ghost the walls of Stokes Croft, quiet arguments with anyone who says street art isn't history.

This is a city that launched the SS Great Britain and helped finance the slave trade, that gave the world Concorde and craft beer in equal measure. It carries its contradictions without apology. The Floating Harbour, once the engine of an empire, now reflects weekend sailors and a skyline softened by independent coffee shops.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours know their way around all of it, from the engineering audacity of Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Georgian terraces of Clifton Village, where Jane Austen's world still seems plausible. Follow the river. Hear who built this place, who suffered for it, and who keeps reimagining it.