Discover Canterbury

A working cathedral city, not a museum piece

Canterbury has been a place people travel to on purpose since long before tourism was a word for it. St Augustine landed in Kent in 597 on a mission from Pope Gregory the Great and founded both the cathedral and the abbey that now bear his name; St Martin's Church nearby is older still, reputedly used for worship by Queen Bertha before Augustine ever arrived. The three sites together form Canterbury's UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thomas Becket's murder in the cathedral in 1170 turned the city into medieval Christendom's third-biggest pilgrimage destination after Rome and Jerusalem, and the roads that pilgrims walked in from, the ones Chaucer's fictional company is riding along in the Canterbury Tales, still lead into the same walled centre today.

The city that grew up around the cathedral is not a stage set. The Stour runs directly through the middle of it, chalk-clear and slow enough for punting, past Franciscan Gardens, under Eastbridge Hospital and along the backs of the timber-framed houses on the King's Mile. The Westgate, built around 1379-80, is the largest surviving medieval city gate in England and still carries traffic through its arch. A working university, Canterbury Christ Church and the University of Kent both, keeps the city younger and livelier than its heritage-town reputation suggests, and the Marlowe Theatre and a proper Thursday and weekend market culture sit alongside the abbey ruins without much friction. Most visitors give Canterbury an afternoon on the way to or from Dover; a full day, ideally two, is closer to what the place actually holds.