St Mary's Church has played a huge part in the history of Nottingham The current building is over 500 years old, but is thought to be at least the third church to have stood on the site, with one being mentioned in the Domesday Book. The tower served as a vantage point in the Civil Way, when Colonel Hutchinson, the Governor of the Parliamentary garrison at Nottingham Castle, would climb it in order to see what the Royalists were doing in their encampment at Trent Bridge.

Nottingham is famous for the hundreds of sandstone caves that are hidden under the city centre and you can see a fine example of one in the back of this pub. In 1866 a brewery operated on the site above the cave and the cave was used as storage for the beer. They soon adopted a shop front to the cave and started selling their products as a public house, and it has traded as a pub ever since.

The current building dates from 1678 as the previous church on this site was pulled down in 1643, during the English Civil Wars, because the church tower was being used by the supporters of the King (the Royalists) to fire on the Parliamentarians taking refuge in Nottingham Castle.

In the early 1800s William Clarke was the landlord if this pub. He was also captain of the Nottinghamshire cricket team and the club secretary, so he made the pub the club headquarters. In the late 1830's he moved to The Trent Bridge Inn in West Bridgford and used the land at the back of the pub to create the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground.

The red brick clock tower, now part of the shopping centre, is all that remains of the Nottingham Victoria railway Station. Built in 1900, the train station was only open for 67years before the decline in the use of the Great Central Railway Line that it served. Work on the building the shopping centre started straight after its closure and it opened in 19972.

Admire yourself in the mirrors above your head at the entrance to this building, formerly a branch of Boots the Chemist. It housed, on the first floor, the Boots Booklovers Library, which had stained glass windows, some of which are still visible from outside. Boots subscription libraries operated until the 1960s and provided subscribers with copies of any book that it was legal to publish in the UK.

With Anish Kapoor’s 6-metre high, polished stainless-steel Sky Mirror reflecting the world outside the building, Nottingham Playhouse has been demonstrating dramatic excellence inside the building since it was opened in 1963 by Lord Snowden. Famous actors who have graced this stage include Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Helena Bonham-Carter and Hugh Grant.

Until the late 1700s this was one of the gates in the city walls and provided an entrance into the city centre. The walls and gates were demolished to allow better traffic flow, and now the life-sized statues of four pedestrians, titled Quartet and sculpted by Richard Perry in 1986, continually walk to and from the market square.

Peek over the wall to see a spiral staircase that leads to a tunnel through the rock on which much of central Nottingham is built. The Park Estate at the bottom of the tunnel comprised large houses built for the great and good of the city from the 1820s onwards and this tunnel was meant to be a road through the rock for their horses and carriages… except that the gradient was too steep for horse-drawn vehicles so it was quickly turned into the pedestrian route that it is today.

Although he only worked here as a journalist on the Nottingham Journal for about 18 months, Nottingham is said to have left a lasting impression on the author JM Barrie. Walking through the local park, the Arboretum, each day he passed a Chinese pagoda and four cannons, plus a lake with an island… which all subsequently made their appearance in his story of Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.

Until it moved into purpose-built premises in 1963 this building was home to the Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company but has an illuminating history as one of Nottingham’s earliest cinemas. Only the second purpose-built cinema in the city, Pringle’s Picture Palace (later known as the Goldsmith Street Picture Palace) was opened in 1910 by Ralph Pringle, an early pioneer of commercial cinema.

Built in 1865, and altered in 1897 by the renowned theatre designer Frank Matcham, the Theatre Royal makes an appearance in the novels of local writer DH Lawrence. It was regarded as a lucky place to try out new plays, so mystery writer Agatha Christie attended the first ever performance of her play The Mousetrap here in October 1952. Still showing in London, the play has since become the world’s longest running theatrical performance.

By one of the huge pillars in the entrance of this independent cinema is a plaque showing an image of William Booth, with a long flowing beard. Booth was born and raised in the Sneinton area of Nottingham and in 1844, at the age of 15, he dedicated himself to God in this building, formerly a Methodist chapel. He went on to found The Salvation Army.

The exuberant architectural features of this building include a turret, crenulations, a pillar supporting an octagonal structure known as a tourelle, plus images of various animals. Local architect Watson Fothergill designed this in 1897, the year that Nottingham was granted a Royal Charter to become a city. As it was also the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria that year too, he included a small sculpture of her head on the side of the building – she’s keeping an eye on Brian Clough’s statue.

The terracotta decoration above the doorway, bearing the date 1897, commemorates both Nottingham’s elevation to the status of a city and Queen Victoria’s 60 years as Queen of Great Britain & Ireland and Empress of India. The names of various countries that were part of the British Empire are listed on the plaque… which looks rather like a postage stamp.

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean first danced together in 1975, as teenagers, on the ice rink that stood here before the National Ice Centre was built - and would continue to train there for quite some time. Following their perfect score at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in 1984, they were given Freedom of the City in 1985 and Jayne Torvill opened the existing Ice Centre in 2000.

In 1945, Nottingham City Council wanted to build a new road to divert the ever-increasing traffic away from the city centre - a project that would cost over half a million pounds. As it meant demolishing many medieval streets and places of historical significance it was vigorously opposed. After much arguing, a public vote was called and the proposal was defeated two to one. Despite this, work began on building Maid Marian Way in 1963.

This is the only pub in the UK that can claim to have a canal inside the building. In fact, you have to cross over a small footbridge to get to the bar upon entry. Originally a warehouse built in 1895, the building was converted into a canal museum in the early 1980s. It was then opened as a pub in 2000.

During the annual Goose Fair, which at the time was held in Old Market Square, the crowds began to protest over the prices the farmers wanted to charge for their goods. People began to grab the large wheels of cheese from the stalls and either made off with them or rolled them down Wheeler Gate or Peck Lane. Apparently, the mayor was bowled over by one of the cheeses!

Before being turned into a shopping centre in the late 1980s, this building was the home to many public houses. It was originally called the Punch Bowl Vaults in 1758, then changed its name to the Blue Ball, the Eight Bells, the Ship Vaults, the Flying Horse Inn, before finally becoming the Flying Horse Hotel. Visitors’ horse-drawn carriages would reach the Hotel’s stables via the entranceway on The Poultry, driving along what is now the centre’s walkway. It is rumoured that, when cricket teams stayed in the hotel, the Council would arrange for the bell on the Council House to be muffled to avoid disturbing their sleep.

A public house is thought to have stood on this site since the 1600s, and, during that time, it has had a colourful history. The murder of a police officer and a prostitute took place there during the 1700s and two people fell to their deaths in unfortunate accidents in the 1800s – one out of an upstairs window and one down the main stairway. At one point in time, the pub was essentially a brothel, and at another the upstairs room was converted into a chapel.

The first ever band to headline at well-known music venue Rock City was The Undertones, on 11 December 1980. They finished the set by playing Teenage Kicks. Iron Maiden was scheduled to have this accolade, but the electrics within the building weren’t finished so their gig had to be postponed.

Before the introduction of free education for all this secondary school, opened on 2 August 1847, was funded by a local philanthropist, George Gill. He wanted to provide secular education for the children of working-class families in the city and gave many people access to an education they otherwise would not have had. Almost from the outset, a range of evening classes was available to cater for those who had to work full time. The school remained in this building until around 1960, when it moved to a nearby location that offered more room.

When a tunnel was being excavated to accommodate a railway line between Victoria Station (where the Victoria Centre now is) and Weekday Cross in the late 1890s, the workmen accidentally dug into the cellars of the pub, where they helped themselves to as much liquid refreshment as they could handle. When he found out what had happened, the landlord sent what can only be imagined to be a rather hefty invoice to the railway company.

The famous screenwriter, novelist and film critic Graham Greene served an apprenticeship working for the Nottingham Journal at these offices in the late 1920s. This was before he had written anything of note, though he went on to write about Nottingham (renamed Nottwich) in his novel A Gun for Sale published in 1936. His nosy Nottingham landlady, Mrs Loney, also appears in his novel Brighton Rock.