Unchanged city allows you to walk in Austen's footsteps

Visit Bath says Jane Austen "plays a hugely important part" in the city's cultural identity

Thousands of people from across the world have been descending on Bath for the Jane Austen Festival, which this year is celebrating 250 years since her birth.

The 24th edition of the event is running until Sunday, featuring a multitude of events including Austen themed walks and Regency-era balls in full costume.

The city first hosted the event in September 2001, with 3,500 people now attending each year.

A spokesperson for Visit Bath said the festival is so popular because the city "pretty much has not really changed" since Austen's days in terms of landscape and Georgian architecture, allowing visitors to "walk in her footsteps".

A spokesperson for Visit Bath said: "Jane Austen plays a hugely important part in Bath's cultural identity especially this year as the city celebrates her 250th anniversary.

"Visitors from the UK and around the world associate Bath with Austen, not just because all of her novels feature the city in some way, but because the city has not really changed since the days she lived here.

"You can still walk in her footsteps and experience the city pretty much as she did."

'Most tiresome place'

Austen, who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, has become synonymous with Bath, having lived in the city from 1801 to 1806.

But despite her initial love for they city, historians say personal letters show her admiration fading as she grew older.

In personal letters, she wrote that she entered Bath with "an anticipating heart and anxiously kept saying to herself 'when shall I leave you' [Bath]".

And in Northanger Abbey, she called the city the "most tiresome place in the world" outside of the first six weeks of the season.

Experts have said this change of heart could have been caused by the fact she kept moving to smaller houses, as her family situation deteriorated after her father's death.

Austen's feelings for the city are being explored at a new exhibition, called Jane Austen in Bath, which is part of this year's festival.