Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine March 2015 | Page 98

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Travel | Liverpool

Located in a converted warehouse on the
Albert Dock, Tate Liverpool is one of just two
Tate museums outside London.
The International Slavery Museum is an
important, wide-ranging museum. It is part
of a complex of museums that also includes
the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the UK
Border Force National Museum.

Over the past several decades, Liverpool
has been fixed in the public imagination
in at least three ways – once as a city in
post-industrial decline, as an ever-important
popular music cauldron, and as the home
of not one but two Premier League
football teams.
These clichéd snapshots have not cast
Liverpool in the same prosperous, cuttingedge light that bathes London and a handful
of other cities across England. This by itself is
not really a problem for the city’s residents.
Liverpool is a gritty and unpretentious city.
Liverpool doesn’t need the spotlight. And
while we’re at it, observe that Liverpool has
rebounded from the economic downturn
quite well, with recent levels of economic
growth that most of the rest of England
would dream to encounter.
Once, of course, Liverpool was properly rich.
Back then it was called the Second City of the
Empire, number two after London. During
the 18th and 19th centuries Liverpool was one
of the world’s top trading ports; in the 19th
century Liverpool rivalled the capital as the

country’s largest generator of wealth,
at certain times even surpassing it.
As befits a city with a serious trading
heritage, Liverpool was also an important
early ocean liner port. Today, the city is on
the brink of regaining its role as a major
cruise port. The opening of the Liverpool
Cruise Terminal in 2007 got this ball rolling,
but the real proof is in the numbers. In 2015,
80,000 international passengers are expected
to dock in Liverpool; the figure for 2014 was
under 58,000. Later this year, Cunard will
resume operating from Liverpool. The city’s
golden age of cruising was eclipsed by the
turn to Southampton in the 1960s. Today,
the city’s status as a cruise port is indisputably
in the ascendance.
A renovation of the city’s landmark 1917
Cunard Building might not be of direct
relevance to Liverpool’s status as a cruise
port, but there is nonetheless a sense of a
return to glory in its revamp. Spearheaded
by Liverpool City Council at an estimated
cost of £15 million, the renovation will see
government offices filling several floors.

© Liverpool City Council; © Carlos Sanchez Pereyra / Getty Images; © National Museums Liverpool

A short train ride from
London lies the home of the
Reds, proudly sponsored
by Garuda Indonesia as
its Official Airline and
Performance Partner.