The free app that lets you explore some of Manchester’s most iconic landmarks

When the CIS Tower was built in the mid 1960s, it was not only the biggest in Manchester but the entire country. Standing at 118m high, the 28-storey office block was the first skyscraper in a city now dominated by them.

It remained Manchester's tallest building for more than 40 years before it was eventually knocked from its lofty perch by the Beetham Tower in 2006. Since then, at least a dozen other skyscrapers have surpassed it.

The CIS Tower, which was awarded Grade II listed status in the 1990s, was previously the home of Cooperative Insurance but has been empty since the Co-operative Group moved to its new headquarters at One Angel Square. But as cranes have popped up across Manchester city centre, the solar-clad building has remained a constant on the ever-changing skyline.

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It is now one of several iconic landmarks to have been included on a series of digital tours around the city. The guided tours are part of an app that has been created by the Modernist Society, a Northern Quarter-based group that champions 20th-century architecture.

The society has devised a series of routes and interactive maps that guide people around some of Manchester's most notable modernist landmarks. As well as the CIS Tower, other buildings on the app tour include the former Kendals and House of Fraser department store building on Deansgate and the Express building in Great Ancoats Street.

The Grade II-listed Express building is the former home of the Daily Express newspaper and was a key part of 'the other Fleet Street' which once existed in the city. Although it opened in 1939, its façade of breath-taking curves, black glass and streamlined horizontal