Work on centre's cinema completed

Building work on the huge cinema is now complete

Developers building Bristol's new £500m shopping area have finished work on the centre's cinema.

The glass roof that covers the central area and forms the centrepiece of the Cabot Circus development, has also been completed.

The centre, which replaces Broadmead, should open at the end of the year and has filled 75% of its shop space.

Project Director Bob De Barr said the new cinema would "bring a real point of difference to Cabot Circus".

More than 2,600 new car park spaces are planned, to serve the 15 new major stores and 150 smaller retail units spaces in the centre.

Cabot was chosen as the official name for the centre after a public vote.

Some groups had complained the first suggested name, Merchants' Quarter, was offensive because of its connotations with the city's slave trading past.

Bristol Alliance, which is behind the project, chose to add Circus.

John Cabot was a 15th Century Italian explorer, also known as Giovanni Caboto, who moved to England and settled in Bristol, from where he set off on many of his epic voyages.