Ancoats was the world's first industrial suburb — a grid of cotton mills built in the late 18th century on land just east of the city centre. The mills were the most technologically advanced buildings of their era; their tall, multi-storey brick facades and cast-iron interiors are now listed buildings. By the 1980s, Ancoats had become derelict. Since the 2010s it has gentrified at speed, and the result is genuinely one of the most interesting urban regenerations in Britain.
Today the neighbourhood holds some of Manchester's best restaurants and bars, independent coffee shops, a bakery in a converted mill with a queue outside on weekend mornings, and a slowly increasing number of residents in converted loft apartments. The juxtaposition of the heavy Victorian industrial architecture and the light, Scandinavian-influenced food and design culture inside it is striking. Ancoats is adjacent to the Northern Quarter but has a more polished feel.