#Newcastle #uk #travelguide #placestovisit
Newcastle upon Tyne – or simply ‘Newcastle’ as it is most commonly referred to – is one of the most iconic cities in Britain, famous for its industrial heritage, eponymous brown ale, popular nightlife and distinct regional ‘Geordie’ dialect.
Located in the North East of England on the banks of the River Tyne, the city has undergone several transformations since it began life as a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall in 122AD. The settlement was known as Pons Aelius, or Aelian Bridge in Latin, ‘Aelian’ being the family name of Emperor Hadrian. In the wake of the Roman’s departure from Britain in 410AD, Pons Aelius was renamed Monkchester and subsumed into the influential Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
The commercial industry was not the only sector to flourish in Newcastle. By the eighteenth century the printing industry was the fourth biggest in UK (after London, Oxford and Cambridge) and the Newcastle Gazette and the Newcastle Courant were the first newspapers in circulation in northern England when they were introduced in 1710 and 1711. The establishment of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1793 (or the Lit and Phil as it is affectionately referred to) attracted intellectuals and academics alike with its wide-ranging debates and plentiful literature in French, Spanish, German and Latin. The building even became the first to use electric lightbulbs when the inventor Joseph Swan chose the Lit and Phil as the showcase for his latest invention.
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