Nottingham's City of Caves: history under your feet

Nottingham is built on a honeycomb of soft sandstone, and the City of Caves is the best way to see it. There are more than 1,000 man-made caves carved into the rock under the city, 544 of them documented, and the City of Caves at Garner's Hill gives you access to the largest publicly available section of that network. Over the centuries these rooms have been cellars, wells and air-raid shelters, and the site keeps a few rare things: the only medieval underground tannery in the country, the remains of the Drury Hill Victorian huts and a Second World War shelter.

If you would rather wander at your own pace, there are two ways to do it. The Nottingham Audio Tour: 'An Immersive Journey' runs through the AudaTours app and works offline, so you only need a smartphone, headphones and a bit of charge. It covers about 2.9 kilometres with 12 stops, taking you past the City of Caves, the National Justice Museum, St Mary's Church, the Adams Building, Broadway Cinema, the Corn Exchange, St Peter's Church, St Nicholas Church, the Severn's Building, Nottingham Castle and Old Market Square. The narration runs to about half an hour, and the whole thing takes around an hour and ten minutes, with no need to go inside any of the buildings along the route. Visit Nottinghamshire also runs a Cave App and Trail, which uses archaeological scanning, flythrough videos and photos to walk you through a 'Top 10 Caves' tour, including the cell where Robin Hood was said to be imprisoned and the hand-chiselled rooms of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem.

That pub is a stop in its own right. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, at 1 Brewhouse Yard, claims to be the oldest pub in England, saying it opened in 1189, though the oldest parts of the building only date from the 1650s and 1660s. It is Grade II listed, and its rooms are carved straight out of the sandstone, with a 'Cursed Gallon' in the Rock Lounge and a shouting-hole chimney.

For a bit of drama, head up to Nottingham Castle on Castle Rock, a natural outcrop with cliffs 40 metres high. The current building is a Stuart Restoration-era ducal palace on the site of a Norman castle started in 1068, and it holds a story that fits the caves theme perfectly: in 1330, an 18-year-old Edward III used a secret tunnel known as Mortimer's Hole to sneak in and arrest Roger Mortimer. The tunnel still exists, with 127 rock-carved steps running from Brewhouse Yard up to the castle terrace, and it reopened in October 2022 after a four-year restoration. The castle is generally open daily from 10:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:00, and adults are £18 plus a booking fee, with children 15 and under free.

If you want to double up, the National Justice Museum sits in a former palace of justice and was the only place in the country where condemned people were arrested, tried, imprisoned and executed, all under one roof. It keeps an underground prison and an old gallows, and it does a joint ticket with the City of Caves, which brings the price down to £23 for an adult and £17.50 for a child. Between the caves, the castle and the museum, you can spend a whole day following the city's history underground.