Canterbury

The Romans captured a British settlement on the Stour in the 1st century AD and named it Durovernum Cantiacorum. Its position on Watling Street, between the Kentish ports of Richborough, Dover and Lympne, gave it strategic importance. After the Romans left Britain in 410 the town was largely abandoned for around a century, until an Anglo-Saxon community grew up inside the walls as Jutes arrived; they called it Cantwareburh, the "stronghold of the Kentish men". In 597 Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to convert King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity, and Augustine made the Roman town the centre of his see, building an abbey and a cathedral and becoming the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

On 29 December 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the cathedral by knights of King Henry II. Pilgrims from all over Christendom came to his shrine, making Canterbury one of the most notable towns in Europe, and the pilgrimage provided the framework for Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales. Henry VIII had the shrine demolished in 1538, ending the pilgrimages. From 1575 French-speaking Huguenot refugees settled in the city, and by the 17th century they made up two-fifths of its population; in 1620 the lease of the Mayflower was negotiated at 59 Palace Street.

In 1787 all the city gates except the Westgate were demolished to ease coach traffic, and in 1830 the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway opened as the world's first passenger railway. The most devastating air raid of the Second World War struck on 1 June 1942, in the Baedeker Blitz, destroying many old buildings. The biggest expansion came in the 1960s with the arrival of the University of Kent and Christ Church College.

Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior clergyman of the Church of England and the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, and with St Augustine's Abbey and St Martin's Church — the oldest existing church in the English-speaking world — it forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The King's School, which traces its origins to Augustine, is described as the oldest extant school in the world.

The playwright Christopher Marlowe was born in the city, and the Marlowe Theatre is named after him; the University of Kent's Gulbenkian Theatre adds a cinema and café, and performances are also staged in the cathedral and at St Augustine's Abbey. The Canterbury Festival, begun in the 1980s, fills two weeks each October and November with opera, symphony concerts, world music, jazz and folk. Chaucer's pilgrims inspired the 1944 film A Canterbury Tale by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The city is the home of Kent County Cricket Club, which plays many of its matches at the St Lawrence Ground. Canterbury's newspaper, the Kentish Gazette, claims to be the country's second-oldest surviving newspaper. Canterbury is also a popular destination at Christmas, when festive lights decorate the medieval streets.

The city had a population of 55,087 at the 2021 census, and one of the highest student-to-resident ratios in Britain: some 31,000 students attend three universities and other colleges, the largest being the University of Kent, which merged with the University of Greenwich in 2026 but keeps its name, and Canterbury Christ Church University. In 2014–15 the two universities were worth £909 million to the city's economy and accounted for 16 per cent of all jobs.

The city is the centre of the City of Canterbury local government district, which also takes in the coastal towns of Whitstable and Herne Bay, 6 miles to the north. Its urban area is divided into the wards of Barton, Blean Forest, Northgate, St Stephens, Westgate and Wincheap. The MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, was elected for the Labour Party but now sits as an independent.

A ring road outside the walls takes traffic away from the pedestrianised centre, and park-and-ride buses carry shoppers and workers in from the edge of the city. The rhythm of the year follows the university terms, with crowds of visitors in the summer months.

Canterbury's city centre has a large choice of low- to mid-range restaurants and cafés in many styles of cuisine. The Old Weavers restaurant stands beside one of the spurs of the River Stour in an area sometimes called "Little Italy" and serves traditional English and Italian dishes, while the Goods Shed, a converted engine shed by Canterbury West station, combines a restaurant with a farmers' market selling local produce. The city also has French markets and farmers' markets.

Kent is called the Garden of England for its fruit orchards. Whitstable, 6 miles north, was famous for oysters gathered from beds offshore from Roman times until the mid-20th century, and still celebrates them with an annual summer Oyster Festival. In nearby Faversham, Shepherd Neame, whose official date of foundation is 1698 though brewing on the site dates back to 1573, produces cask ales and filtered beers and has 286 pubs and hotels in South East England, mostly in Kent and London.