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Few visitors pass through Yorkshire , England's largest county, without spending time in history-soaked York , for centuries England's second city. Famed primarily for its minster, the city is a comprehensive ensemble of medieval alleys, castle ruins, tucked-away churches, riverside gardens and topnotch museums. York's mixture of medieval, Georgian and Victorian architecture is mirrored in miniature in the prosperous north and east of the county by towns such as Beverley , centred on another soaring minster; Richmond , banked under a crag-bound castle; and Ripon , gathered around its honey-stoned cathedral. Knaresborough shares similar attributes, but is overshadowed by the faded spa-town gentility of neighbouring Harrogate . The Yorkshire coast, too, retains something of the grandeur of the days when its towns were the first to promote themselves as resorts: places such as Bridlington and Scarborough boomed in the nineteenth century and again in the postwar period, though the best of the Yorkshire coast is found in characterful, historic places such as Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay . The engine of growth during the Industrial Revolution was not in the north of the county, but in the south and west. By the nineteenth century, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and their satellites were the world's mightiest producers of textiles and steel . Ruthless economic logic left some of the cities battered by depression in the later years of the twentieth century, though a millennium vigour has infused South and West Yorkshire. The city-centre transformations of Leeds and Sheffield in particular have been remarkable, both now featuring a series of high-profile attractions, while Bradford and its National Museum of Photography, Film and Television waylays people on their way to Haworth - birthplace of the Bronte sisters. During even the worst of times, broad swathes of moorland survived above the slum- and factory-choked valleys. The Yorkshire Dales , to the northwest, form a lovely patchwork of limestone hills and serene valleys, ranging from the gentle, grassy spans of Wharfedale and Wensleydale to the majestic heights of Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent, and the wilder valleys of Swaledale, Dentdale, Ribblesdale and Malhamdale . Less visited, but still worth as much time as you can spare, is the county's other National Park, the North York Moors , divided into bleak upland moors and with a tremendous rugged coastline. The region is also scattered with a host of historic sites and buildings. The stately home of Castle Howard stands out, but there are also imperious relics of the Industrial Revolution, notably the Italianate pastiche of Saltaire , a millworkers' village on the outskirts of Bradford. In an earlier age, before the Reformation, Yorkshire had more monastic houses than any other English county, centres not only of religious retreat but also of a commercial acumen that was to lay the foundations of the region's great woollen industry. Many beautifully situated monastic ruins survive today at Fountains, Rievaulx, Bolton Abbey, Whitby and elsewhere, graceful counterpoints to the more solid remains of the castles at York, Richmond, Scarborough and Pickering - the foremost of more than twenty castles raised in Yorkshire by the Normans.
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