City in East Sussex, England
Brighton
Brighton has a palace that looks like the Taj Mahal, a pier that gave up and burned, and a football club that once played home games in Gillingham.
Key information
- County
- East Sussex
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 277,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- The Royal Pavilion, Palace Pier, pebble beach, the Lanes, Pride and the Brighton Festival
- What locals are called
- Brightonians
- Famous people
- Aubrey Beardsley, Max Miller, Caroline Lucas, Fatboy Slim
- Football clubs
- Brighton & Hove Albion (the Seagulls)
About Brighton
The prince who built a palace by the sea
Brighton's most famous building looks as if it was lifted from India and dropped on the Sussex coast. The Royal Pavilion, with its onion domes and minarets, began as a modest seaside villa for the Prince Regent, the future George IV, who first came for the sea air in the 1780s. Between 1815 and 1823 the architect John Nash turned it into the fantasy we see today. Inside, the kitchen has cast-iron columns shaped like palm trees, and the interiors are packed with dragons and Chinese-style decoration. Queen Victoria found the place too public and left it behind, and in 1850 the town bought the whole thing from her. During the First World War the Pavilion then served as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers.
How a fishing village became London-by-the-Sea
For centuries Brighton was a fishing town called Brighthelmstone. Its fortunes changed in 1750, when Dr Richard Russell published a treatise recommending sea water as a cure for ailments, and the fashionable crowd followed. The railway from London arrived in 1841 and made the town a day-trip destination for everyone. That is where the nickname London-by-the-Sea comes from, along with a reputation for the cheeky weekend away. Brighton and neighbouring Hove were united under one local authority in 1997, and the joined-up Brighton and Hove received city status in 2000 as part of the millennium celebrations.
Piers, pebbles and a very small railway
Brighton Palace Pier opened in 1899 and is still packed with arcades, rides and chips eaten by gulls' favourite customers. The West Pier is the sad twin: it opened in 1866, closed in 1975 and was wrecked by fires in 2003. Its skeleton still stands offshore, and at dusk thousands of starlings swirl around it in murmurations. Along the seafront runs Volk's Electric Railway, built by Magnus Volk and opened in 1883. It is often described as the oldest operating electric railway in the world. The beach is pebbles, not sand, which every visitor learns the hard way when barefoot. The Brighton i360 tower, opened in 2016, lifts a glass viewing pod around 138 metres above the beach.
Gangsters, mods and Waterloo
Brighton has always had a slightly raffish edge. Graham Greene set his 1938 novel Brighton Rock among the town's racecourse gangs, and the name is also what you'll find lettered all the way through sticks of seaside rock. In 1964 bank holiday clashes between mods and rockers on the seafront made national headlines. They were later recalled in the film Quadrophenia, whose finale is set on the Sussex cliffs near Brighton. And in 1974 ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest at the Brighton Dome with Waterloo, a victory that launched them worldwide. The city has since become a byword for alternative culture, from the Brighton Festival and Fringe in May to one of the UK's biggest Pride celebrations. In 2010 it elected Caroline Lucas as the first Green Party MP in Britain.
The Seagulls and the long road home
Brighton & Hove Albion are known as the Seagulls. The club reached the 1983 FA Cup final and took Manchester United to a replay, losing 4-0 after a 2-2 draw. In the dying seconds of the first game Gordon Smith missed a chance that gave the commentator's line "and Smith must score" a famous afterlife. The Goldstone Ground was sold in 1995, but Albion kept playing there until 1997, then spent two seasons playing home games in Gillingham, some 70 miles away. Fans campaigned hard to save the club, and the new Amex Stadium opened in 2011. Albion reached the Premier League in 2017 and played in European competition in 2023-24. Not all of the city's sport is on grass. The Brighton Marathon and the London to Brighton bike ride and veteran car run bring thousands to the seafront each year.
Lanes, laines and where to eat
The Lanes are the old fishermen's alleys, now full of jewellers and antique shops. A short walk away, the North Laine is the bohemian bit, with independent shops, vintage clothes and cafés. Brighton is one of the best-known places in the UK for vegetarian and vegan food, and has a long-running independent restaurant scene. On the seafront, though, traditional fish and chips and a stick of rock still do very nicely.