Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 119, May 7, 2024, Dover (Canterbury), England, UK
Canterbury is a city and UNESCO World Heritage Site,
in the county of Kent,
England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River
Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climate.
Canterbury
is a popular tourist destination, with the city's economy heavily reliant upon
tourism, alongside higher education and retail. As of 2011, the city's
population was over 55,000, including a substantial number of students and one
of the highest student-to-permanent-resident ratios in Britain.
The
city has been occupied since Paleolithic times and served as the capital of the
Celtic Cantiaci and Jute Kingdom
of Kent. Many historical structures fill the area, including a city wall
founded in Roman times and rebuilt in the 14th
century, the Westgate Towers museum, the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey, the
Norman Canterbury Castle, and the oldest extant school in the world, the King's School. Modern
additions include the Marlowe
Theatre and Kent County Cricket Club's St Lawrence Ground. Canterbury Cathedral is
known for its architecture, its music, and for being the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury; it
receives a million visitors per year.
The Canterbury area has been inhabited since prehistoric
times. Lower Paleolithic axes, and Neolithic and Bronze
Age pots have been found in the area. Canterbury
was first recorded as the main settlement of the Celtic tribe of the Cantiaci, which inhabited most of modern-day Kent. In the 1st century AD, the Romans captured the settlement and named it Durovernum
Cantiacorum. The Romans rebuilt the city, with new streets in
a grid pattern, a theatre, a temple, a forum, and public
baths. Although they did not maintain a
major military garrison, its position on Watling Street relative to the major Kentish ports of Rutupiae (Richborough), Dubrae (Dover), and Lemanae (Lymne) gave it considerable strategic importance. In
the late 3rd century, to defend against attack from barbarians, the Romans built an earth bank around the city and a wall
with seven gates, which enclosed an area of 130 acres.
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