Bangor is the only place in Wales that holds city status by ancient prescriptive right - a status it has held continuously since the medieval period, on the strength of its cathedral and the privileges granted to its bishops by successive English kings. By population, Bangor is the third smallest city council area in Wales after St Davids and St Asaph, and the sixth smallest in the United Kingdom. The community covers just 2.79 square miles. The urban built-up area is even more compact at 1.65 square miles. Walking from one end of the city to the other takes thirty minutes; the High Street, at 1.265 kilometres, is the longest in Wales, threading from west to east with the city built into its slope like a coastal village that decided to keep growing.

Bangor Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Deiniol, occupies the original sixth-century site, although the present Grade I listed building dates mostly from the twelfth century with significant later modifications. It has a two-bay chancel, transepts, a crossing tower, and a seven-bay nave. Just down the hill stands Bangor University, founded in 1884 as the University College of North Wales, born of the slate quarrymen's pennies and middle-class subscriptions. The university established the first Welsh-language chair at any university in 1894, occupied by Sir John Morris-Jones. Friars School, a free grammar school founded in 1557, predates it by more than three centuries. The city has been an education centre for the best part of half a millennium, with a particular vocation for the Welsh language.

Until 1718 Bangor was a small place. The London-to-Dublin mail coach route ran east of the town, crossed the Lavan Sands and took a ferry to Beaumaris on Anglesey. Then the sub-postmaster was appointed and the mail route was diverted through Bangor to the Porthaethwy ferry, and the town began to grow. Thomas Telford built his Menai Suspension Bridge in 1826 - the first major suspension bridge in the world - connecting Anglesey to the mainland just upstream from Bangor. Robert Stephenson followed with the Britannia Bridge in 1850 to carry the railway across. Bangor became a junction point where road, rail and water all converged on a single small Welsh city, and tourism began arriving by steamboat from Liverpool. By the time the BBC evacuated parts of its operation here during the Blitz of 1941, Bangor had become a substantial city of services.

In 1893, the city built itself a pier. Garth Pier stretches 1,500 feet out into the Menai Strait, making it the second-longest pier in Wales and the ninth-longest in the British Isles. It was conceived as a promenade pier for the amusement of holiday-makers, who could pay a penny to stroll among pinnacle-roofed kiosks above the water. In 1914 a vessel broke free of its moorings and struck the pier. The Royal Engineers patched it; permanent repairs in 1922 turned out to require considerable expense once the damage was properly understood. In 1974 the pier was nearly condemned. Arfon Borough Council bought it for a nominal sum and proposed to demolish it. The county council intervened, secured Grade II listed status, and between 1982 and 1988 the structure was fully restored. The British Listed Buildings inspector called it the best in Britain of the older type of pier - one without the large pavilion at the landward end. It reopened on 7 May 1988 and still stands today, painted white against the green water of the Strait.

Bangor has a large student population which gives the city its character but also affects its statistics. While Gwynedd is the most Welsh-speaking county in Wales, with 65% Welsh speakers in the 2011 census, Bangor itself returned only 36% - a substantial drop from 46% a decade earlier, largely because the student population dilutes the figure. Nearby Bethesda and Caernarfon remained 75 to 80% Welsh-speaking. The city is ethnically more diverse than most of north Wales: in the 2021 census 85% of residents identified as White British, with 8% Asian or Arab, 3% Mixed Race, and 2% Black. In 2021, Bangor elected Owen Hurcum as mayor at the age of 22 - the youngest mayor in Welsh history and the first non-binary mayor of any UK city. A small cathedral city, by any measure, that has not stopped writing its own story.