Joy Division's Manchester: Annual Ian Curtis Memorial Tour

Every 18th of May, we honour one of our finest, Ian Curtis, on a walking tour through Joy Division's Manchester city centre sites.

Tour begins at 3pm, Sunday the 18th of May 2025, outside the Mercure Hotel on Portland Street.
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We honour Ian Curtis on the day he died: 18 May.
Curtis, a tortured soul, a visceral, troubled mind with a voice that echoed Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop and Matt Monro, briefly led Joy Division, the finest flower of the early days of Manchester’s Factory Records, shaking sensibilities and sending shivers down the spine on an all too brief catalogue of classic works, epitomised by the epic “Dead Souls” and the harrowing “Shadowplay”, in which he prefigured his own sad suicide.
This is a tour of Ian Curtis’s Manchester haunts – Rafter’s, Pip’s, the Afrique Club, Rare Records, the Briton’s Protection, the Beach Club...a forgotten, almost pre-historic Manchester.

You may also like the following events from New Manchester Walks:

• Next Wednesday, 7th May, 11:30 am, Manchester's only expert tour of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Manchester
• Next month, 18th May, 12:00 pm, The Grand Canals of Manchester: Expert Official Tour in Manchester