For much of English history Leicester was not particularly important, and that turned out to be a gift. While other cathedral cities collected grand civic buildings and political clout, Leicester quietly built up an economy of framework knitters working machines in their own front rooms, turning out stockings. The Industrial Revolution scaled this up into factories, the factories scaled up into wealth, and in 1919 Leicester was granted city status almost as a delayed acknowledgement that something significant had happened here. The knitting machines are mostly gone now, but their imprint is everywhere: in the redbrick factory buildings of the lace market, in the surnames in the local phone book, in the way Leicester always preferred to make things rather than govern them.

Leicester is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United Kingdom, and you will eat better here than the price suggests. From the 1960s, families arrived from the Caribbean, then from East Africa and the Indian subcontinent, then more recently from Somalia, Poland, and across western and southern Africa. The Gujarati community is centred on Belgrave Road, in a stretch the locals call the Golden Mile, and it has turned Leicester into something close to the Indian vegetarian capital of Europe. Order a thali at a cafe along Belgrave, watch the lights go up for Diwali in October, and try to find a comparable concentration of dosa, kachori, and farsan anywhere else in England. You will struggle. The takeaway map of Leicester also covers Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, and American, but it is the South Asian food that the city has made its own.

Leicester sits on the M1 between London and the north, which makes road access fast but the inner ring road genuinely confusing the first time you try it. Park-and-ride sites at Meynells Gorse, Birstall, and Enderby will spare you the worst of it. By train, Leicester is roughly an hour from London St Pancras on the Midland Main Line, with direct trains also to Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield, Stansted Airport, and Cambridge. East Midlands Airport, half an hour by SkyLink bus, handles the budget European flights. Once you arrive, the city centre is genuinely walkable, and beyond the centre a tangle of bus companies will get you anywhere worth going as long as you ask the driver for a Flexi Day ticket. Cycling is pleasant in the valley and slightly punishing on the climbs out.

The Lanes around Loseby Lane hide independent shops and tea rooms. The Highcross shopping centre handles your big-name needs. St Martin's Square offers smaller boutiques and a quieter pace. For a longer walk, follow the canal and the River Soar northward through Abbey Park to Watermead Park, where the city dissolves into water meadows and birdlife. South of the centre, the same river-and-canal corridor runs through Aylestone Country Park into open country, with the option of catching a bus back. Rutland Water lies twenty miles east, a reservoir turned weekend resort for birdwatchers, sailors, and people who simply want a horizon. In August, the Caribbean Carnival fills the streets with sound systems and dancers, a tradition the West Indian community brought with them and that everyone in the city now claims as their own.

Two universities, the University of Leicester and De Montfort University, give the city its student-driven nightlife: traditional pubs that have been pulling pints since the framework-knitting days, champagne bars for the more aspirational, vodka bars for the more adventurous, and a small but established scene of LGBTQ venues. Daytime drinkers will find an abundance of coffee shops in the centre, although most close when the offices do. Sleeping in Leicester is straightforward; hotels and guesthouses cover all budgets, and the tourist information centre in Town Hall Square will steer you to whatever suits your stay. As of July 2022, all four UK carriers offer 5G across the city, so the conversation about whether to call or to message has finally been settled in favour of whatever you prefer.