The Wolverhampton Art Gallery on Lichfield Street holds the largest collection of Pop Art outside London. Warhol's Campbell's Soup, a Roy Lichtenstein, Pauline Boty's Colour Her Gone, Nicholas Monro's King Kong. Entry is free, which for a collection like this feels like an oversight in your favour.
The gallery sits on the golden mile of Victorian civic buildings, a short walk from Queen Square, which was called High Green until Queen Victoria came to unveil the equestrian statue of Prince Albert in 1866 and the name was quietly upgraded. Locals still call the statue the Man on the Horse. The rebuilt railway station is a few minutes east, and the Metro tram now runs into the centre, so the city centre is the obvious base if you want to walk everywhere.
Eating here is better than the city gets credit for. Bilash on Cheapside has been doing Bangladeshi fine dining since 1980 and has been in the Michelin Guide for years running; the Goan King Prawn Masala uses prawns imported from Bangladesh, and head chef Sitab travels to South Asia yearly to bring recipes back. Cafe Rosa does mostly-vegan Indian cooking, dosas and thalis, and lists masala fries as its speciality. There is a long-standing Thai place, Made In Thai, with hand-painted friezes on the walls.
For pubs, this is a serious real-ale city. The Posada on Lichfield Street is an ornate Victorian survivor with a faience frontage, snob screens and a tiled interior; it stands on the site of an earlier tavern called the Noah's Ark. The Great Western, tucked behind the old Low Level Station, was CAMRA National Pub of the Year in 1991 and pours Holden's ales among the Wolves and railway memorabilia. Hail to the Ale in Newbridge opened in 2013 and is generally credited with starting the West Midlands micropub trend. The Lych Gate Tavern has a Georgian front from 1724 and a rear that goes back to the 1500s.
Wolverhampton Market has been trading in some form since 1179. West Park is 43 Victorian acres with a boating lake and a bandstand, laid out on a former racecourse. Bantock House sits in another 43 acres, a free museum with restored Edwardian rooms. Tettenhall, a couple of miles northwest, is a genuine urban village with a green, old bakeries and butchers, and wooded high ground above it.
Then there is Molineux, home of Wolves since 1889 and said to be the first ground used only for football. It was among the first British grounds with floodlights, in 1953, and the club switched from old gold to a brighter gold the next year so it showed up better under them. Three miles southwest, Wightwick Manor is an Arts and Crafts house stuffed with William Morris wallpapers and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, its interiors inspired by notes Theodore Mander took at an Oscar Wilde lecture given in the town in 1884.
Beverley Knight grew up here and put it plainly: "I just love coming home."
