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	A relatively young city, only receiving City status as recently as 1925, Stoke-on-Trent is renowned for the design and manufacture of world class products.
Home to 250,000 people and the world's foremost ceramic manufacturers, Stoke-on-Trent is a unique city made up of six separate towns, each with its own Town Hall, distinct character and identity. The six towns are Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton and are affectionately known as The Potteries.

Look around your house and you will soon discover something from Stoke-on-Trent. The dinner service? The ornaments? The tiles in the bathroom? Even the kitchen sink? Stoke-on-Trent is famous world wide for its pottery industry, Burslem being the birthplace of Josiah Wedgwood and the site of the first factory.
	At the Wedgwood Visitor Centre, you can see the skilled potters and decorators at work creating today's pottery products. The award winning Gladstone Working Pottery Museum offers an educational insight into the City's heritage, providing the only example of a 19th century pottery factory with cobbled yard, original workshops and huge bottled kilns.

The attractions of its industrial heritage have proved a magnet for tourists in recent years, drawn by the city museum and art gallery, housing one of the world's finest collections of ceramics, and a series of industrial museums, graphically setting out the working methods and conditions of days gone by.

Following the decline of its other staple industry -- mining -- the Government and European Community have poured hundreds of millions of pounds into a revitalisation program for the city. A Ł14 million cultural quarter has revolutionised the entertainment facilities and a 500-acre site at Trentham Lakes has create thousands of new jobs. A new Ł135 million motorway-standard road linking the country's main arterial routes, the M1 and M6, will provide quick and easy access to the city.

The City Museum and Art Gallery in Hanley boasts the world's largest collection of Staffordshire ceramics and one of the UK's finest collections of craft pottery, from medieval times to the present day.

Whatever the age and interest, there is a host of things to see and do in and around the City. Exciting outdoor pursuits, two waterfun centres, magnificent gardens, internationally recognised museums, two First Division Football Clubs, factory tours of world famous pottery companies and Alton Towers, Britain's most exciting theme park.

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