Bradford is the second-largest city in West Yorkshire, England. It forms the core of the City of Bradford metropolitan borough, which also includes the towns of Keighley, Shipley, Bingley and Ilkley, and borders the City of Leeds and Calderdale to the east and south respectively as well as the counties of Lancashire and North Yorkshire.

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". Lying in the eastern foothills of the Pennines, 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.

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