Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, North West England. Liverpool was established as a borough in 1207 in the county of Lancashire and became a significant town in the late seventeenth century, when the port at nearby Chester began to silt up. Liverpool is England's only UNESCO City of Music and has produced many notable musicians, including the Beatles.

As with other large cities, Liverpool is an important cultural centre within the United Kingdom, incorporating music, performing arts, museums and art galleries, literature and nightlife among others. In 2008, the cultural heritage of the city was celebrated with the city holding the title of European Capital of Culture, during which time a wide range of cultural celebrations took place in the city, including Go Superlambananas! and La Princesse. Liverpool has also held Europe's largest music and poetry event, the Welsh national Eisteddfod, three times, despite being in England, in 1884, 1900, and 1929.

Music
Liverpool is internationally known for music and is recognised by Guinness World Records as the "World Capital City of Pop".Musicians from the city have produced 58 No. 1 singles, more than any other city in the world. Both the most successful male band and girl group in global music history have contained Liverpudlian members. Liverpool is most famous as the birthplace of the Beatles and during the 1960s was at the forefront of the Beat Music movement, which would eventually lead to the British Invasion. Many notable musicians of the time originated in the city including Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers. The influence of musicians from Liverpool, coupled with other cultural exploits of the time, such as the Liverpool poets, prompted American poet Allen Ginsberg to proclaim that the city was "the centre of consciousness of the human universe". Other musicians from Liverpool include Billy Fury, A Flock of Seagulls, Echo & the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frankie Vaughan, Anathema, Ladytron, The Zutons, Cast, Atomic Kitten and Rebecca Ferguson. The La's 1990 hit single "There She Goes" was described by Rolling Stone as a "founding piece of Britpop's foundation."

The city is also home to the oldest surviving professional symphony orchestra in the UK, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which is based in the Philharmonic Hall. The chief conductor of the orchestra is Vasily Petrenko. Sir Edward Elgar dedicated his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 to the Liverpool Orchestral Society, and the piece had its first performance in the city in 1901. Among Liverpool's curiosities, the Austrian émigré Fritz Spiegl is notable. He not only became a world expert on the etymology of Scouse, but composed the music to Z-cars and the Radio 4 UK Theme.

Well established festivals in the city include Africa Oyé and Brazilica which are the UK's largest free African and Brazilian music festivals respectively. The dance music festival Creamfields was established by the Liverpool-based Cream clubbing brand which started life as a weekly event at Nation nightclub. There are numerous music venues located across the city, however, the Liverpool Arena is by far the largest. Opened in 2008, the 11,000-seat arena hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards the same year, and since then has played host to world-renowned acts such as Andrea Bocelli, Beyoncé, Elton John, Kanye West, Kasabian, The Killers, Lady Gaga, Oasis, Pink, Rihanna, and UB40.

On 7 October 2022, the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that Liverpool would host the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 on behalf of the previous year's winning country Ukraine, which was unable to meet the demands of hosting the event due to security concerns caused by the Russian invasion of the country. The contest was held at Liverpool Arena, and consisted of two semi-finals on 9 and 11 May and a final on 13 May 2023. This was the first time that the contest took place in the city, and was also a record-extending ninth time that the UK has hosted the contest, having last done so in Birmingham in 1998.

Visual arts
Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the United Kingdom apart from London. National Museums Liverpool is the only English national collection based wholly outside London. The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England and was, until the opening of Tate Modern, the largest exhibition space dedicated to modern art in the United Kingdom. The FACT centre hosts touring multimedia exhibitions, while the Walker Art Gallery houses one of the most impressive permanent collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. Sudley House contains another major collection of pre-20th-century art. Liverpool University's Victoria Building was re-opened as a public art gallery and museum to display the university's artwork and historical collections which include the largest display of art by Audubon outside the US. A number of artists have also come from the city, including painter George Stubbs who was born in Liverpool in 1724.

The Liverpool Biennial festival of arts runs from mid-September to late November and comprises three main sections; the International, The Independents and New Contemporaries although fringe events are timed to coincide. It was during the 2004 festival that Yoko Ono's work "My mother is beautiful" caused widespread public protest when photographs of a naked woman's pubic area were exhibited on the main shopping street.

Performing arts
Liverpool also has a long history of performing arts, reflected in several annual theatre festivals such as the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, which takes place inside Liverpool Cathedral and in the adjacent historic St James' Gardens every summer; the Everyword Festival of new theatre writing, the only one of its kind in the country; Physical Fest, an international festival of physical theatre; the annual festivals organised by Liverpool John Moores University's drama department and the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts; and other festivals by the large number of theatres in the city, such as the Empire, Epstein, Everyman, Playhouse, Royal Court, and Unity theatres.

Notable actors and actresses from Liverpool include Arthur Askey, Tom Baker, Kim Cattrall, Jodie Comer, Stephen Graham, Rex Harrison, Jason Isaacs, Tina Malone, the McGann brothers (Joe, Mark, Paul, and Stephen), David Morrissey, Elizabeth Morton, Peter Serafinowicz, Elisabeth Sladen, Alison Steadman, and Rita Tushingham. Actors and actresses from elsewhere in the world have strong ties to the city, such as Canadian actor Mike Myers (whose parents were both from Liverpool) and American actress Halle Berry (whose mother was from Liverpool).