The city’s economy, originally chiefly industrial with shoemaking a large sector, has changed throughout the eighties and nineties to a service-based economy. Norwich Union, an Aviva company, still dominates these, but has been joined by other insurance and financial services companies.

Norwich Market is an ancient market place, established by the Normans between 1071 and 1074, and is today the largest 6 days a week open air market in England.

New developments on the former Boulton and Paul site include the Riverside entertainment complex with nightclubs and other venues featuring the usual national leisure brands. Nearby, the football stadium is being upgraded with more residential property development alongside the river Wensum.

Castle Mall, a shopping mall designed by local practice Lambert, Scott and Innes and opened in 1993, presents an ingenious solution to the problem of sensitively creating new retail space in a historic city-centre environment - the building is largely buried underground and in the side of a hill.

The new Chapelfield shopping mall has been built on the site where the Caleys (later Rowntree Mackintosh and Nestle) chocolate factory once stood. This opened in late September 2005, and is described as ‘a major new shopping experience’, featuring a new three-floor flagship House of Fraser department store. The new shopping mall has largely been criticised as unnecessary and damaging to local businesses.

Archant, formerly known as Eastern Counties Newspapers (ECN) is a national publishing group that has grown out of the city’s local newspaper, the Norwich Evening News and the regional Eastern Daily Press (EDP).

Norwich has long been associated with the manufacture of mustard. Colman’s was founded in 1814 and continues to operate from its factory at Carrow.