Portsmouth is a port city and unitary authority in Hampshire, on the south coast of England. Most of the city lies on Portsea Island, which makes Portsmouth the only city in the United Kingdom not primarily situated on the mainland. It stands 22 miles east of Southampton, 50 miles west of Brighton and Hove and 74 miles south-west of London. The 2021 census recorded a population of 208,100, and Portsmouth is the second-most densely populated city in the United Kingdom after London. Together with Southampton, Gosport, Fareham, Havant and Eastleigh, the city forms the South Hampshire conurbation of around 860,000 residents.
The town was founded around 1180 by the Anglo-Norman merchant Jean de Gisors and received its royal charter on 2 May 1194. The Royal Navy has maintained a base in the city since the late Middle Ages. Henry VII built the world’s first dry dock at the naval base in 1496, and the dockyard’s “Great Stone Dock”, originally opened in 1698 and rebuilt in 1769 as the present No. 5 Dock, is the oldest dry dock still in use anywhere in the world. By the early 19th century Portsmouth was the most heavily fortified city in the world, ringed by the Palmerston Forts on Portsdown Hill and out into the Solent. During the Second World War the city lost 930 residents in the Portsmouth Blitz and served as a principal embarkation point for the D-Day landings of June 1944. Formal city status was granted on 21 April 1926.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, within the operational naval base HMNB Portsmouth, holds three of the most-visited warships in Britain: the Tudor warship Mary Rose, raised from the Solent in 1982; HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar and the world’s oldest commissioned naval ship; and HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy’s first iron-hulled warship of 1860. The dockyard also houses the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Across the harbour entrance, the former HMS Vernon shore base reopened in 2001 as Gunwharf Quays, a waterfront retail and leisure complex overlooked by the Spinnaker Tower, which rises 560 feet above the harbour.
The seaside resort of Southsea occupies the southern shore of Portsea Island, with Clarence Pier, South Parade Pier, Southsea Castle and the open ground of Southsea Common. The world’s only scheduled passenger hovercraft service, Hovertravel, crosses from Southsea Hoverport to Ryde on the Isle of Wight in about ten minutes. Portsmouth International Port handles around three million passengers a year on cross-Channel and cruise routes, making it the second-busiest port in the United Kingdom after Dover. The University of Portsmouth has roughly 23,000 students, and the novelist Charles Dickens was born in the Landport area of the city in 1812.