Birmingham Tourism, England United Kingdom

Star City Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Barber Institute of Fine Arts National Sea Life Centre Ikon Gallery Cadbury World St. Philip's Cathedral Bull Ring Shopping Centre Brindleyplace Frankfurt Christmas Market Birmingham Botanical Gardens Birmingham Repertory Theatre St Martin in the Bull Ring Aston Hall Blakesley Hall Chocolates at Cadbury's Jewellery Quarter

Birmingham's early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centres of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the densely wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden.

There is evidence of hominid activity in the Birmingham area dating back 500,000 years, with stone age artefacts suggesting seasonal settlements, overnight hunting parties and woodland activities such as tree felling. The many burnt mounds that can still be seen around the city indicate that modern humans first intensively settled and cultivated the area during the bronze age, when a substantial but short-lived influx of population occurred between 1700BC and 1000BC, possibly caused by conflict or immigration in the surrounding area. Further evidence of subsequent iron age settlement can be found at Berry Mound, a hill fort located in the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire, near Shirley. During the 1st century Roman conquest of Britain the forested country of the Birmingham Plateau formed a barrier to the advancing Roman legions, who built the large Metchley Fort in the area of modern-day Edgbaston in AD48, and made it the focus of a network of Roman roads.

Birmingham as a settlement dates from the Anglo-Saxon era. The city's name comes from the Old English Beormingahām, meaning the home or settlement of the Beormingas – suggesting that Birmingham was established in the 6th or early 7th century as the primary settlement of an Anglian tribal grouping of that name. By the time of the Domesday Book of 1086, however, the manor was one of the poorest and least populated in Warwickshire, valued at only 20 shillings, with the area of the modern city divided between the counties of Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

The development of Birmingham into a significant urban and commercial centre began in 1166, when the Lord of the Manor Peter de Birmingham obtained a charter to hold a market at his castle and followed this with the deliberate creation of a planned market town and seigneurial borough within his demesne or manorial estate, around the site that became the Bull Ring. This established Birmingham as the primary commercial centre for the Birmingham Plateau at a time when the area's economy was expanding rapidly, with population growth nationally leading to the clearance, cultivation and settlement of previously marginal land. Within a century of the charter Birmingham had grown into a prosperous urban centre of merchants and craftsmen. Within another fifty years it was the third largest town in Warwickshire.

The de Birmingham family continued to be Lords of Birmingham until the 1530s when Edward de Birmingham was cheated out of its lordship by John Dudley.

As early as the 16th century, Birmingham's access to supplies of iron ore and coal meant that metalworking industries became established. By the time of the English Civil War in the 17th century, Birmingham had become an important manufacturing town with a reputation for producing small arms. Arms manufacture in Birmingham became a staple trade and was concentrated in the area known as the Gun Quarter. During the 18th century, Birmingham was home to the Lunar Society, an important gathering of local thinkers and industrialists.