Old City and the Merchant Quarter

Bristol Cathedral

A medieval abbey church with a hall-like east end.

You're standing on College Green, in front of the west front of Bristol Cathedral. The building began as St Augustine's Abbey, founded in 1140 and consecrated eight years later, and it became the cathedral of the new diocese of Bristol in 1542, when the monasteries were dissolved. Go in, and the first thing worth noticing is the east end. It's a hall church: the aisles rise to the same height as the central nave, which is rare in England and typical of the decorated work of the 1300s.

The Elder Lady Chapel, at the far east end, is older still, from the early 1200s. What looks most medieval to most visitors, the nave, was built in the 1860s and 1870s by George Edmund Street, who finished an interior the abbey had left half built at the Dissolution. The western towers came in 1888. Entry is free, with a suggested donation of five pounds.

Most of the money that paid for these stones came from the trade in the streets you're about to walk.

Well Hung Lover

Banksy's 2006 mural, best seen from the bridge above Frogmore Street.

You're on the bridge at the bottom of Park Street, looking down Frogmore Street at a naked man hanging from a window ledge. Banksy painted him in June 2006 on the side wall of what was then a sexual health clinic, about five metres above the pavement. He's gripping a real window, not a painted one: the wall and the drop do the work. Above him, a suited man leans out, and a woman in her underwear stands behind.

Bristol City Council was in the middle of a campaign against graffiti and the mural was due to come down, so the council asked residents what they thought. Ninety-seven per cent said keep it, and it was granted retrospective permission, the first piece of street art in the UK to be made legal after the fact. It has been defaced more than once since. In 2009 somebody fired paintballs at it from this bridge, and four of the splatters are still there, left in place because cleaning them off could take the paint underneath with them.

Christmas Steps

A 1669 stairway of small shops, with a chapel at the top.

You're at the top of Christmas Steps, and the stone plaque beside you gives the date: the lane was stepped down and finished in 1669, at the cost of Jonathan Blackwell, a wine merchant who had been sheriff of Bristol and later became an alderman in London. The street it replaced had a medieval name, Knifesmith Street, after the cutlers who worked here, and there's still an argument about which of the two gave the lane its Christmas name. The other candidate is the nativity window in the Chapel of the Three Kings of Cologne at the top, built by John Foster in 1504 for the almshouses he founded next door. The stone alcoves flanking the stairs were seats for people catching their breath on the climb.

Before you start down, look at how narrow it is: this was the road out of the city toward the Aust ferry and the crossing into Wales. Now walk down between the little shopfronts. The steps and the alcoves were rebuilt between 1865 and 1881, and they're listed.