Current Time in Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom

Kingston upon Hull, known to almost everyone simply as Hull, stands in the East Riding of Yorkshire in northern England, where the small River Hull flows into the wide Humber estuary. The land is flat and open, the skies enormous, and the estuary carries a constant traffic of ships towards the North Sea. The city looks outward rather than inland, and its history has always been bound to water.

About two hundred and seventy thousand people live here. Hull remains one of Britain's significant ports, handling containers, timber and ferry traffic to the Netherlands and Belgium, and in recent years it has become a centre of the offshore wind industry, with a large factory on the docks manufacturing turbine blades for wind farms in the North Sea.

The settlement began as Wyke, a wool port established by the monks of Meaux Abbey, and in 1299 King Edward I purchased it and granted a charter, giving the town its formal name, the King's Town upon Hull. It prospered on trade with the Baltic and the Low Countries, refused entry to Charles I in 1642 in an act that helped begin the English Civil War, and later grew rich on whaling and then on distant-water fishing, sending trawlers as far as Iceland. Hull was the most heavily bombed British city outside London during the Second World War, losing much of its centre, and the collapse of the fishing industry in the 1970s dealt it another hard blow. Its selection as UK City of Culture in 2017 marked a turning point, bringing investment, visitors and renewed confidence.

The cobbled Old Town survives around Holy Trinity, one of the largest parish churches in England, and the Museum Quarter offers free admission to Wilberforce House, birthplace of William Wilberforce, who led the campaign to abolish the British slave trade, along with the Streetlife and maritime collections. The Deep, a striking aquarium shaped like a ship's prow at the meeting of river and estuary, is the best-known modern landmark, and the Ferens Art Gallery holds a fine collection. A short drive west, the Humber Bridge, opened in 1981 and for many years the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, is worth the journey.

Hull has produced the aviator Amy Johnson, and the poet Philip Larkin spent thirty years as librarian at its university, writing much of his best work here. The city has two rugby league clubs whose rivalry defines the sporting calendar, a well-regarded theatre and a distinctive independent telephone network that gave it Britain's only cream-coloured phone boxes.

Trains run to Leeds, York and London, the M62 motorway ends nearby, and overnight ferries sail to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge. The University of Hull, founded in 1927, and its medical school serve some fifteen thousand students.

Hull is honest, resilient and full of maritime character, a city that has reinvented itself more than once and rewards those who look closely.