Huge docks which once harboured the world’s ocean-going liners. Gleaming museums of the modern age. A world famous canal, as deep as Suez, as powerful as the Panama.

In Salford Quays a new city has risen; a city of glass, steel and burnished metal, bold and brilliant.

On one side of the water the silver shards of the Imperial War Museum North. On the other the Lowry Centre, a matchless theatre for the matchstick figure artist. They have been joined by Media City, northern home of the BBC and Coronation Street. Alongside, stretches the water, filling the old Manchester Docks, cleaned and spruced for leisure and pleasure.

We explore the new city on the old canal, switching to and from the hi-tech world of today to the days when the Port of Manchester thrived as the 4th largest in the country.