Manchester is a large city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in England. Manchester became a city in 1853. The population of the Manchester local government district was estimated to be 458,100 in 2007. The city of Manchester itself lies at the centre of the wider Greater Manchester county, which at the 2001 census was shown to have an approximate population of 2,240,000 (of which nearly 400,000 lived within the Manchester sub-division), and it was the UK's third-largest city at that census. Manchester is part of the second-most-populous Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) in the UK with an estimated 2004 population of 2,539,100 and is the fourteenth-most populated in Europe.

Forming part of the English Core Cities Group, Manchester is nicknamed 'Second City' and 'Capital of the North', Manchester today is a centre of the arts, the media, higher education and commerce, and is located near to Liverpool, labelled the 'Capital of Culture'. In a poll of British business leaders published in 2006, Manchester was regarded as the best place in the UK to locate a business. A report commissioned by the Manchester Partnership which was published in 2007, showed Manchester to be economically the fastest growing city in England. It is the third-most visited city in the United Kingdom by foreign visitors. In 2002, the Commonwealth Games were hosted in Manchester and it has two Premier League football teams, Manchester United and Manchester City.