Bristol is a vibrant, diverse and innovative city and has managed to rack up many interesting stories - but how many of the facts below did you know before?

Let us know if you have any other interesting trivia about the city, and we'll add it to the list!

You can also browse through our 'About Bristol' blogs

Where is Bristol?

• Bristol is located just 120 miles west of London and is the largest city in the south west of England.
• Bath is about 12 miles to the east of the city, and 45 miles away across the Bristol Channel is Cardiff in Wales.
• The city is situated on the River Frome and River Avon.
• Bristol lies at one end of the Great West Way, a 125 mile long touring route between here and London.

Image: An aerial view of Bristol Harbour, the River Avon and the River Frome

Bristol Statistics

• Today, Bristol is a buzzing, multicultural university city of 459,000.
• There are at least 45 religions, at least 187 countries of birth and at least 91 main languages spoken in Bristol.
• Bristol has two universities with over 54,000 students.
• Bristol is a green city, there are over 400 parks and gardens.

Image: Bristol is a green city - CREDIT Paul Box

Bristol Accolades

• Bristol was voted #1 in the best places to visit in the UK in 2024 by Time Out
• Bristol was voted Best City to Live in Britain in the Sunday Times Best Places to Live Guide 2017.
• Bristol was crowned the Best Culinary Destination in the World Food Travel Association: Food Trekking Awards 2019
• Bristol was named as one of the 10 happiest cities to work in the UK by The Guardian.
• Bristol has two Michelin-starred restaurants: Bulrush and Paco Tapas.
• Bristol was named as The Best Place to Live Outside of London for Under 25s
• Bristol was the first UK city to be awarded European Green Capital in 2015.
• Bristol has been ranked as the UK’s greenest city by Compare The Market
• Bristol was named World Vegan Capital by foodie website Chef’s Pencil.
• According to a study by charity 52 Lives, Bristol is the kindest city in the UK.
• Bristol was named most artistic city in the UK by a survey from Premier Inn, considering the number of museums, theatres, amount of live music gigs and the quantity of street art.
• Bristol is a UNESCO City of Film.
• Bristol was named the UK’s first cycling city.
• Bristol is a Fairtrade city, which sees us trading fairly with nearly five million workers in 58 developing countries
• In 2017, Bristol was named UK’s most environmentally friendly city.
• Bristol was named as one of The Best European Cities to visit in 2019 by The Independent.
• Bristol was named in the Guardian 'Where to go on holiday in 2019 – the hotlist'
• Bristol named ‘Rising Star’ destination at National Geographic Traveller Reader Awards

Image: Clifton Observatory overlooking The Clifton Suspension Bridge

Bristol History

• Bristol began life as a town called Brigg stow, which means the meeting place at the bridge in the old Saxon language. The original town was listed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 1051.
• The legend goes that America was actually named after a Bristolian! Richard Amerike was responsible for a large part of John Cabot’s funding when he took his voyage to America.
• The city played an important role in England's maritime trade in tobacco, wine, cotton and more.
• From the late 1600s to the early 1800s, Bristol was involved in a massive slave shipping industry.
• During WWII the Mercure Bristol Grand on Broad Street was the base for a network of spies who operated out of the building on behalf of the British government. Hotel employees would pass them encrypted notes which provided them with information about where they were required to travel while Temple Meads station provided covert trains that transported them around the country to secret locations.

Find out more about Bristol History

Find out more about Bristol and the USA

Image: The Matthew at Bristol Harbour Festival - CREDIT Jim Cossey Photography

Bristol People

• Pero's Bridge is named after Pero Jones, who was the African servant of a plantation owner.
• Hollywood legend Cary Grant (Archibald Leach) was born in Horfield, Bristol. Grant's first role in theatre was working at The Bristol Hippodrome.
• Graffiti artist Banksy is from Bristol, his work can still be seen at sites across the city - he occasionally pops home to do a new one too!
• One of history’s most groundbreaking engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, found his home in this forward-thinking city and created some of his most memorable masterpieces here, including Brunel’s ss Great Britain and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
• One of the greatest cricketers and sportsmen of all time, WG Grace was born in Downend, just a short distance from central Bristol. 
• Blackbeard (Edward Teach), the world's most famous pirate is thought to have been born in Redcliffe, near Bristol Harbourside, around 1680.
• In 1899, 13-year-old schoolboy, A.E.J. Collins scored the highest ever recorded cricket score of 628 not out, playing in a junior school house cricket match at Clifton College.
• Darth Vader is a Bristolian. David Prowse was an English bodybuilder and actor best known as portraying the physical form of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy.
• Agatha Christie was married on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1914 at Emmanuel Church, Clifton, Bristol

Find out more about famous people from Bristol

Image: Banksy's Mild Mild West mural

Weird and wonderful Bristol

• The Exchange building on Corn Street which shows two times - the black minute hand shows London time (now GMT), and the red hand shows Bristol time! This was before time was standardised across the UK to accomodate railway schedules.
• The first ever bungee jump took place from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1979, with members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club.
• Built in 1606, The Hatchet is the oldest pub in Bristol and its ancient door is said to be covered in the skins of executed criminals.
• There's a bit of Bristol in Lower Manhattan - the 'Bristol Basin' was built using rubble from the city after the Second World War and has a plaque to commemorate its origins.
• Like New York, Bristol is both a city and county.
• At St Mary Redcliffe Chuch there is a small stone plaque with a dedication to “Tom The Church Cat”. Tom was a tabby cat who was found scratching at the door to the church during a rainstorm in 1912 and soon became a resident of the church, chasing down mice and occasionally sitting near the altar during services. Tom was such a beloved member of the congregation that upon his death in 1927, he was given a full funeral service and buried in the ground close to where he had once been found. Find out more facts about Bristol's oldest churches here.
• Bristol Zoo was the 5^th oldest zoo in the world and since then has helped over 175 species from extinction including one of the most poisonous animals on Earth, the golden poison frog. It closed in September 2022.
• The phrase 'Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion' relates to Bristol's high tidal range. Ships moored in the harbour would be aground at low tide and, because of their keels, would fall to one side. If everything was not stowed away tidily or tied down, the results were chaotic and cargo could be spoiled.
• There’s a book bound with human skin on display in M Shed.
• Bristol has its own ‘leaning tower’. Temple Church leans at 2.7 degrees, which is just one degree less than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• Bristol’s Fire Station is built on the location of an ancient 12^th Century Knights Templar garrison and is said to be haunted. Since the first year of opening in 1975, experienced fire crews have reported seeing odd characters in the building and on one occasion the Cook chased a figure out of the kitchen.
• Highbury Vaults was the pub where prisoners went for their last meal, before they were hung at the Gallows at the top of St. Michael’s Hill. It is now claimed to be a haunted building.
• Fossils of the oldest known dinosaur in Britain and one of the oldest in the world were found in Bristol.
• You may have heard of the Bristol Stool Scale or Bristol Stool Chart, which was actually developed in Bristol at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1997 to classify the form of human poo into seven categories - what a claim to fame!

Made in Bristol

• Every British Concorde made their maiden flight from Filton Airfield in Bristol and now you can visit Concorde Alpha Foxtrot at Aerospace Bristol. She was designed, built and tested in Bristol, and was the final Concorde to be built and the last to fly.
• Aardman Animations are based in Bristol, and create well-loved classics including Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run and Pirates!
• Bristol is the world's biggest manufacturers of hot air balloons with Cameron Balloons based in the city.
• Ribena was invented in Bristol at the National Fruit and Cider institute and marketed as a health drink due to its high concentration of Vitamin C.
• BBC Bristol produce a whopping 25% of all the world's nature documentaries - many of them featuring the legendary Sir David Attenborough. You can do tours of the BBC Bristol Studios to find out more.
• Fry's Chocolate in Bristol was the first company in the world to manufacture chocolate bars, and one of the first to make chocolate Easter eggs too.
• The city used to be one of the most important glass-making centres in Europe, thanks to its distinctive Bristol Blue Glass which dates back some 300 years.

Find out more about Bristol inventions

Image: Concorde Alpha Foxtrot at Aerospace Bristol

Film, TV and Literature

• Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous book Treasure Island features many locations around Bristol, which you can discover on the Treasure Island Trail.
• Bristol has been used as a filming location in many popular TV programmes and films, including Only Fools and Horses, The Young Ones, Skins, Sherlock and many more.
• Author J.K. Rowling was born and brought up in Chipping Sodbury, just a few miles from Bristol. It is claimed that she drew inspiration for her famous character Harry Potter after meeting a young boy in Bristol.
• The Victoria Rooms, built in 1841, were host to many a literary icon. Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins performed two plays here in 1851, and Oscar Wilde also spoke at the Victoria rooms at great length on aesthetics.
• The sensationally popular HBO fantasy/drama series "Game of Thrones" boasts three Bristol born and bred members of its gigantic cast; Jacob Anderson (as Grey Worm); Hannah Murray (as Gilly) and Maisie Williams (as Arya Stark).
• Bristol is home to Bottle Yard Studios, the largest dedicated film and TV studio facility in the West of England. Many recognisable productions are filmed here including Poldark, Wolf Hall, Sherlock, Fortitude, The Crystal Maze, Trollied, Hellboy, Broadchurch and Galavant.

Find out more about Bristol Film and TV

Find out more about Literary Bristol

The oldest, original, biggest and best!

• John Wesley's New Room, in Bristol Shopping Quarter, is the world's oldest Methodist church.
• We The Curious is home to the UK’s first 3D planetarium
• Europe’s biggest street art festival, Upfest, is held in Bristol.
• The Bristol Old Vic is the oldest continuously working theatre in the English speaking world.
• Bristol is home to Europe's largest hot air balloon fiesta every August.
• The Red Lodge Museum on Park Row includes a room which was once the first school in England to educate girls.
• Gloucester Road, for a time, contained the longest unbroken chain of independent retailers in all of Europe.
• Royal York Crescent in Clifton, built between 1791 and 1820, is the longest terrace in Europe. As a nod to superstitious, there is no number 13, just 12a and 12b.
• Vale Street in Totterdown has been officially recognised as Britain's steepest street. With an average incline of 22% (and an even steeper initial climb)
• Built in 1861, and now in the possession of the M Shed, the Mayflower tugboat is not only the oldest working boat in the harbour, it is also the oldest Bristol built boat still in operation and the oldest tugboat in the world.
• Queen Square is the largest Georgian residential square in England.
• The UK’s longest treetop walkway can be found at Westonbirt Arboretum.
• The first women ordained as Church of England priests were ordained at Bristol Cathedral on 12 March 1994.

Image: The UK's first 3D Planetarium at We The Curious

Everything else...

• Bristol is famous for trip-hop and drum and bass, due to local music acts Massive Attack, Portishead and Roni Size among others.
• Across the world there are 35 cities, towns and other places named Bristol, all of which are believed to be named after the original (and best) Bristol, UK. 29 of them are in the USA alone, making it one of the most popular place names in America.
• The River Avon has the second highest tidal range in the world
• Avon comes from the Celtic word 'Afon' meaning river, so the River Avon actually means 'River river'
• The Avon Gorge, near Clifton is one of the most important botanical sites in the UK. The gorge has 27 incredibly rare plants and is home to some specimens of tree that are not found anywhere else in the entire world including the Bristol Whitebeam tree. Rare breeds of bats and falcons are also frequently spotted at the gorge.
• With a height of 89 meters, the tallest building in Bristol is St Mary Redcliffe, it is also the third tallest parish church in the UK and Queen Elizabeth I once called it 'the fairest, godliest, and most famous parish church in England'
• Flying to over 115 destinations, in over 34 countries, handling over 8.2 million passengers Bristol Airport is the fastest growing regional airport in the UK
• St Nicholas Market was named as one of the ten best markets in the UK, and is home to the largest collection of independent retailers in Bristol

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