Hull is to succeed Derry as the UK City Culture, it has been announced this morning.
The Humberside city will host the year-long celebations in 2017.
The city will now hope to see an economic boost from the accolade, which is handed out every four years.
Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Maria Miller said the City of Culture year in Derry demonstrated the “huge benefits” the title brings.
She added: “These include encouraging economic growth, inspiring social change and bringing communities together.
“It can produce a wonderful mix of inward investment and civic pride, and I hope Hull’s plans will make the most of all that being UK City of Culture can bring.”
The judges chose the city ahead of Leicester, Swansea Bay and Dundee.
TV producer Phil Redmond, who chaired the advisory panel that helped choose the winner, said all four shortlisted cities showed a “real understanding” of what the award was about.
But he said: “Ultimately it was the unanimous verdict of the panel that Hull put forward the most compelling case based on its theme as ‘a city coming out of the shadows’.”
Kingston upon Hull, better known as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire in England.
It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles (40 km) inland from the North Sea.
The city has a resident population of 256,100 and its Larger Urban Zone population stands at 573,300.
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