Birmingham, Unscripted

Drop your bags at your city-centre base — staying central means the canals, the Jewellery Quarter and the civic core are all on foot.

Start with the city's grandest cultural anchor. The BMAG's collections span Pre-Raphaelite paintings, ancient civilisations and the decorative arts that made Birmingham famous as a manufacturing powerhouse. The building itself — all terracotta and Victorian self-confidence — sets the tone for everything that follows.

A short walk down Fleet Street brings you to Itihaas, one of Birmingham's most respected Indian restaurants. The cooking is precise and regional, reflecting a city whose relationship with South Asian cuisine runs deep and genuine. A proper sit-down lunch before an afternoon on foot.

Step outside and you're almost immediately facing one of the most photographed buildings in the city: a Roman temple dropped into the heart of a Victorian metropolis. The Town Hall has been a civic meeting place since 1834 and its columns and portico have an authority that no set designer could replicate.

Head south-west from Centenary Square and drop down to the towpaths. Birmingham's canal network is longer than Venice's — the narrowboats, iron bridges and warehouses along Gas Street Basin have provided some of the most atmospheric footage the city has ever lent a camera.

Right on the Brindleyplace waterfront, Gas Street Social is the place to decompress after a full first afternoon. Pull up a seat with a view of the basin and take stock of how much canal-side architecture you've covered today.

Las Iguanas at The Waters Edge sits right on the canal with the evening light playing across the water. Latin American flavours — bold, spiced, generous — make this an easy, relaxed way to end a day of walking. The waterside terrace is particularly good when the city starts to quieten.

Day two belongs to the Jewellery Quarter, a neighbourhood whose dense grid of workshops, showrooms and Victorian terraces has made it one of the most visually distinctive parts of the city. The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter is built around a real factory preserved exactly as it was when it closed — tools on the benches, dust on the windowsills — and gives you the clearest possible picture of the craft that built this quarter.

A few minutes' walk from the museum sits St Paul's, an 18th-century Georgian church surrounded by a quiet square that feels conspicuously calm against the surrounding streets. Its proportions and pale stone make it one of the more quietly striking buildings in the quarter.

Head back towards the city centre for lunch at Takumi, Birmingham's well-regarded Japanese restaurant. Precise, unfussy cooking — ramen, donburi, katsu — that rewards anyone who makes the trip. A good change of pace before the afternoon's explorations.

A five-minute walk from Brindleyplace, Ikon occupies a restored Victorian Gothic schoolhouse and puts on some of the most adventurous contemporary art in the Midlands. Admission is free, the programme rotates regularly, and the building's industrial-Victorian bones give every exhibition a distinct character.

Follow the canal towpath north-west to the Roundhouse — a circular Grade II listed stable block from 1874 that once housed the city's canal maintenance horses. Its curved brick walls and yard have a raw, cinematic weight that makes it one of the more surprising stops in the canal quarter.

Back in the Gas Quarter, Tap & Spile is a proper real-ale pub — unpretentious, well-kept, good for a slow pint after a day that's covered a lot of ground. The kind of place where Birmingham locals actually drink.

Round off the trip at La Galleria on Ethel Street — Italian cooking done with care, in a room that doesn't shout for attention. Pasta, wine, good bread: a grounded, satisfying end to two days spent reading the city as a location in its own right.