At the heart of Birmingham lies a series of delightful interlinked open spaces. Victoria Square leads into Chamberlain Square, which leads, via Paradise Forum, to Centenary Square. These pedestrianised areas not only provide pleasant strolling well away from the traffic, but contain a huge number of statues and sculptures that illustrate the city's rich history.
Also in the city's heart, the rebuilt Bullring shopping centre is a brilliant example of imaginative redevelopment. Millennium Point now houses Birmingham's industrial and scientific museum collections, and the city's elegant Georgian Cathedral is an older, but equally impressive, treasure.
On the edges of the city centre, the Chinese and Jewellry Quarters provide an unusual contrast to the mainstream shopping opportunities of the city centre and wherever you go, you'll find plenty of shops, pubs, cafés and restaurants. The centre of Birmingham makes for an invigorating introduction to the UK's second city.

1 Victoria Square
The centrepiece of Birmingham's main pedestrian zone is a massive water feature designed by Dhruva Mistry. Officially called ‘The River', a two-tonne bronze statue of a naked woman, reclines amid the jets of the fountain, with poetry by TS Eliot running around the lip of the pool. It's certainly impressive, but has been nicknamed by locals as ‘The Floozie in the Jacuzzi'.The Square is also overlooked by the imposing Council House, a statue of Queen Victoria, and a quirky metal statue by ‘Angel of the North' sculptor Anthony Gormley. A shorter, wingless version of its northern cousin, ‘Iron: Man' is sunk up to its calves in the pavement, and leans at an angle, seemingly slightly the worse for wear.

2 Chamberlain Square
Beyond Victoria Square is Chamberlain Square, named after Birmingham's pioneering 19th century mayor Joseph Chamberlain, which contains another splendid collection of public buildings and statues. The huge Town Hall, designed by Joseph Hansom (inventor of the Hansom Cab) lies at the square's far end and is modelled on the Roman temple at Nimes in Provence. The other side is dominated by the rambling Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, topped by a clock known as ‘Big Brum', and contains one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the world, by the likes of Edward Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais and Ford Maddox Brown.
Traditional statues in the square commemorate scientists Watt and Priestley, and best of all is a life-size statue of the city's first MP, Thomas Atwood, sprawled across the steps above the Town Hall.

3 Centenary Square
A short stroll through the modern Paradise Forum brings you to Centenary Square. Beyond the Hall of Memory, built in 1925 to honour the dead of WWI, the square is dotted with wonderful modern sculptures. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre stands to the right, and Broad Street runs along the left. A statue of industrial pioneers Bolton, Watt and Murdoch checking blueprints, has the tongue-in-cheek nickname ‘The Carpet Salesmen'. At the square's far end, the International Convention Centre, with its high-tech Symphony Hall, is flanked by the glass tower of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. It's a wonderful riot of architectural styles.

4 The Jewellry Quarter and the Chinese Quarter
These two areas on the edges of the city centre have a character all of their own. From the middle of the 18th century, silversmiths, goldsmiths and jewellers moved into the area just to the north-west of the city centre. Today it's filled with jewellry retailers and manufacturers, and houses the excellent ‘Museum of the Jewellry Quarter' in an old factory. The entrance to the Chinese Quarter, on the city centre's south-eastern edge, is marked by towering pagoda, hand-made in China and donated to the city in 1998. The area contains numerous Chinese restaurants and food shops.

5 The New Bullring
The original Bullring was a vile example of 1960s shopping-precinct design at its worse. It has since thankfully been demolished, with only the cylindrical Rotunda (which has a certain retro-charm) being retained. From the resulting building site has arisen a huge and imaginative shopping complex.
Opened in September 2003, the 110,000m2 development provides all-weather shopping streets and open spaces on three levels, covered over by 7000m2 of clear roof to give the the illusion of al fresco shopping. The star of the complex is the award-winning Selfridges. With its undulating curves covered in some 15,000 reflective aluminium discs, it looks less like a building and more like a giant contestant in Come Dancing.

6 Millennium Point
The largest English millennial project outside London, the spectacularly futuristic building known as Millennium Point was opened on the east side of Birmingham's city centre in September 2001. Centred around ‘The Hub' (a mall that's open from 7am to 11pm daily), it contains the IMAX Theatre, the University of the First Age, the Young People's Parliament, the University of Central England's Technology Innovation Centre and a range of shops, organisations and businesses.
Taking up half of the building is the Museum of Science and Discovery, otherwise known as ‘Thinktank'. Its ten innovative and hands-on galleries cover various scientific topics and there's even a gallery specifically aimed at under-7s.

7 Birmingham Cathedral
The Cathedral of St Philips is a beautiful baroque building surrounded by a park-like churchyard. Consecrated as recently as 1715, St Philips was originally a parish church chosen for its current role in 1905 because its location was more pleasant than that of its older rival, St Martin's.
The four splendid stained-glass windows were produced in the 1880s by Edward Burne-Jones. Also worth seeing is the simple but affecting memorial to the victims of the two IRA city-centre bombs of 1974.