Ripon's market square is one of the most handsome in the north of England, flanked by Georgian townhouses and dominated by a tall obelisk erected in 1781. The Wakeman's House, on the corner of the square, is a late medieval timber-framed building that houses a small museum about the history of the city and the horn-blowing ceremony. It is one of the oldest domestic buildings still standing in Ripon.
The square comes alive on Thursday mornings with a traditional market, and the Saturday market is one of the larger ones in the area. The nine o'clock horn-blowing ceremony is genuinely atmospheric on a quiet weekday evening — this is not a tourist performance staged for visitors but a ritual that the city has simply never stopped observing.