There is a funny story on the RIBA Journal website about Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn’s unlikely trip to Manchester, where he encounters funk/soul group the Commodores. The story also mentions Kahn’s tour of Manchester architecture. He spots the Barton Arcade and insists both he and his guide lie on the floor to admire the roof, saying ‘the pattern is like a line drawing of Brunelleschi’s dome’.

I happened to be walking along Deansgate on a recent visit to Manchester and took an impromptu detour through this  Victorian arcade – described in the Manchester Pevsner as ‘probably the best example of this type of cast-iron and glass-roofed arcade anywhere in the country’ – and took this picture of the roof: