Nottingham is the largest of three East Midlands cities, with Leicester and Derby for siblings. Its centre lies on the River Leen, with the River Trent forming the southern boundary on its run from Stoke to the Humber. The 2021 city population was around 324,000 and the wider urban area around 719,000. The old industries that built the place - lace-making and coal - have largely gone, replaced by services, two large universities, and a steady tourism trade. The heart of everything is Old Market Square, redeveloped in 2006 and still the spot where everyone meets. Look north and the Council House dome dominates the skyline; below it, the Exchange Arcade leads to upmarket shopping. East of the square is the Lace Market, the Victorian quarter where the textile finishers worked, and just beyond that the bohemian streets of Hockley, full of vintage shops and small bars.

Nottingham makes its own argument for trams. The Nottingham Express Transit network runs two lines that cross in the city centre and diverge to four termini at Hucknall, Phoenix Park, Toton Lane and Clifton South, with Park and Ride sites strung along the route. A day ticket is £5.50; a £1.50 short hop will get you from the railway station up to the centre. Add buses from trentbarton and Nottingham City Transport - red and orange liveries everywhere - and the Robin Hood Prepaid Card that ties them all together, and a car becomes redundant within the inner ring road. Walking works too. The historic streets are largely pedestrianised, and the centre is compact enough that nothing important is more than fifteen minutes from anything else.

Nottingham Castle sits high on a sandstone outcrop above the city, with the Robin Hood statue at its foot. The keep was dismantled after the Civil War in 1651, and what stands now is mostly a seventeenth-century ducal mansion converted into a museum - the real archaeology is the rock itself, which has been quarried and carved for so long that the hill is honeycombed with caves. Tours run through the old brewing cellars, smugglers' passages, and the City of Caves under the Broadmarsh shopping centre, where leather tanners once worked away from polite air. The autumn Goose Fair is medieval in origin and now a vast funfair that takes over the Forest Recreation Ground for several days each October - if you're in town then, you cannot miss it, and your hotel room will know it from the noise. The Riverside Festival in early August closes the summer with live music, markets and fireworks along the Victoria Embankment.

At least three Nottingham pubs claim to be among the oldest in England - Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem under the castle rock, Ye Olde Salutation Inn on Maid Marian Way, and The Bell Inn on the Market Square. The claims are loud and unresolvable; the pints are real either way. The Pitcher and Piano on High Pavement is a stylish bar built inside a former Unitarian church, with stained glass still in the windows. For a quieter pint, the Lord Nelson in Sneinton has a garden and a roster of real ales. Shopping splits along the same lines: chain stores on Lister Gate and Clumber Street, designer labels on Bridlesmith Gate and inside the Exchange Arcade, and the alternative scene clustered around Goose Gate in Hockley, where Void, Wild and Ice Nine cater to the people who do not want what the high street is offering.

Nottingham picked up the tongue-in-cheek nickname 'Shottingham' from a period of bad press over knife and gun crime in particular suburbs, and the locals will roll their eyes if you mention it. As with most large cities, the inner districts are fine in daylight; the council estates of St Ann's and The Meadows need the usual after-dark caution, particularly for people walking alone. Get past the headlines and what you find is a small, walkable, friendly city where two universities pump 60,000 students through the bars and bookshops, where the trams run on time, and where the basement of any old pub might turn out to be a hand-cut sandstone cave from before the Conquest. The Queen of the Midlands still keeps her own counsel.