Bradford is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. It is located approximately 8.6 miles (14 km) west of Leeds and lies in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. Population within the council area was estimated in 2019 to be 539,776. It is the third-largest city in the Yorkshire and the Humber region after Leeds and Sheffield, northern England’s fourth-largest, sixth-largest in England and seventh-largest in the United Kingdom. Bradford also forms part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area, which in 2001 had a population of 1.5 million and is the fourth largest in the United Kingdom.

Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence in the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the “wool capital of the world”; this in turn gave rise to the nicknames “Woolopolis” and “Wool City”. The area’s access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford’s manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has a large amount of listed Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Since local government reform in 1974, Bradford’s city limits have been within the City of Bradford metropolitan borough.

From the mid-20th century, deindustrialisation caused Bradford’s textile sector and industrial base to decline, and since then, it has faced similar economic and social challenges to the rest of post-industrial Northern England, including poverty, unemployment and social unrest. Bradford has a significant economy within the Yorkshire and the Humber region; it is the third-largest at around £10 billion, which is mostly provided by financial and manufacturing industries. Bradford has also emerged as a tourist destination, becoming the first UNESCO City of Film with attractions such as the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford City Park, the Alhambra theatre and Cartwright Hall.