Liverpool Match Day: A Visitor's Guide to Anfield and the Hill Dickinson Stadium

Liverpool FC and Everton FC both trace their history back to the same ground. A boardroom dispute in 1892 saw Everton leave Anfield for a new home at Goodison Park, and Liverpool FC was formed almost immediately afterwards to fill the vacated stadium. The two clubs have shared the city, a few hundred metres apart at their old grounds, ever since, and the rivalry between them, the Merseyside derby, is genuinely local in a way that some British football rivalries no longer are: it is common to find both colours in the same family.

Anfield, Liverpool FC's ground, now holds just over 61,000 and sits in a residential neighbourhood a few miles north of the city centre, not a purpose-built stadium quarter. That setting is part of what gives match days their character, but it also means the streets around the ground get genuinely congested for hours either side of kick-off; driving to or parking near Anfield on a match day is not recommended, and a bus or taxi is the practical option. On non-match days, the club runs guided stadium tours through the dressing room, the players' tunnel and pitch side, paired with the LFC Museum's history of the club's European Cup and Premier League silverware; tours do not run on match days or immediately around fixtures, so check the schedule before travelling out to Anfield specifically for a tour.

Everton left Goodison Park, their home for more than a century, for the new Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock on the waterfront, part of the broader dock redevelopment that contributed to the UNESCO delisting of Liverpool's waterfront in 2021. The new stadium sits directly on the river, a markedly different setting from Anfield's residential streets, and represents one of the largest sports infrastructure projects completed in Britain in recent years.

For any visitor whose trip might overlap with a fixture, whether or not football is the point of the visit, it is worth checking both clubs' fixture lists before booking accommodation. Match weekends fill hotels across the city, push up prices, and change which restaurants are realistic to book without weeks of notice; this is true even for visitors with no interest in the game themselves, simply because the city's capacity gets absorbed. Combining a stadium tour at one club with a walk past the other's ground, close enough to do both in an afternoon, gives a fuller sense of the city's football identity than either alone, and avoids the trap of treating Liverpool as a one-club city when it has never been that.