Coventry Today

Information about the City Today

City centre shopping

It is for good reason that the Phoenix bird - mythological but famous for it's re- birth through fire - was added to the Coventry Coat of arms after the second world war. The city has risen from the ashes of the Blitz.

A large proportion of the city was flattened or burnt during one night (14th November 1940). That night a total of 449 German bombers attacked the City, dropping around 500 tons of high explosives and more than 40,000 fire bombs. These figures by today's standards of destructive power seem small. The centre of the City was unrecognizable after the war. 

The City planners set out a plan for the City for it's post war rejuvenation. In its leaflet, The Future of Coventry published shortly after the war, plans were set out together with the reason for those plans. It has been said that what Hitler didn't do the planners finished for him. Believable? I think so in some part. There is a picture in the leaflet which shows the City rooftops in a delightful mosaic of the type much loved in roof top views of some Italian City's -  not unlike old York. The caption under this picture reads " An incoherent unplanned mass". Hmm... I don't think so.Nevertheless the city changed into what we see today.

Even in this, just post war, leaflet we see the planned ring road. There is a school of thought that says that the ring road traps the city within it's limits. I believe that to be true. Birmingham has only grown by breaking through it's modern City wall - the inner ring road - by bridging it. It is certainly true that the Inner City in Coventry is building right up to it's ring road.

I hope to show both here on the Coventry Images pages and in the History section that Coventry is a vibrant and yet historic city with an eye fixed firmly on the future.

There is a gallery of pictures with pictures of Coventry today- the modern stuff. You can link to it here...