Discover York

Eboracum, Jorvik, York: one city, three names

York has been a capital of somewhere for most of two thousand years. The Romans founded Eboracum in AD 71 as a legionary fortress, and Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor here in AD 306; the Multangular Tower in Museum Gardens still stands from that fortress. The Vikings took the city in 866 and made it Jorvik, the trading capital of the Danelaw, and the dig under Coppergate in the 1970s and 80s recovered the streets, houses and workshops that the Jorvik Viking Centre now rebuilds on the exact spot they were found. The medieval city that grew on top of both gave York its Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, and the circuit of walls and gateways, the Bars, that still enclose the centre.

The more recent centuries are just as present. York became the railway capital of the north in the 19th century, and the National Railway Museum keeps Mallard, the fastest steam locomotive ever, a short walk behind the station. Two Quaker dynasties, Rowntree and Terry, made York England's chocolate city; the KitKat and the Chocolate Orange were both invented here, and Nestlé still makes KitKats in the city today. Guy Fawkes was born in York in 1570, the racecourse on the Knavesmire has run the Ebor meeting since 1843, and the compact centre inside the walls, the Shambles, the snickelways, Stonegate, is small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes.