King's is recognised as a centre of excellence for Fencing, and produces junior internationals.

Also at the university is the Scottish National Swimming Academy, as well as the Gannochy National Tennis centre, which is seen as a tennis centre of excellence.

The University of Barcelona is the principal centre of university research in Spain and has become a European benchmark for research activity, both in terms of the number of research programs it conducts and the excellence these have achieved.

The Gannochy National Tennis Centre on the University campus is recognised as a national centre of excellence, and the campus also has an indoor 50 metre swimming pool, badminton and squash courts, a fitness centre, strength and conditioning centre, sports halls and all-weather playing fields available for student, staff and public use.

Southampton is highly regarded as a centre for educational excellence and outstanding teaching, considered one of the top universities in the UK, ranking nationally as a top 15 university in various tables, 12th in the UK according to the 2009 the Sunday Times, and regularly rated in the top 10 of the National Student Survey.

Dumfries Ice bowl is also recognized as Scotland's only centre of ice hockey excellence, and trials for the Scottish Jr national team are carried out at this venu.

Throughout the years, Stranraer has also become a centre of excellence for Scottish curling.

It is recognised across Yorkshire and Humberside as a centre of excellence.

In 1780 the University of Münster ( today called " Westphalian Wilhelms-University ", WWU ) was established, now a major European centre for excellence in education and research with large faculties in the arts, humanities, theology, sciences, business and law.

The college was founded to be a centre of academic excellence which, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, would also be based on a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos.

Galway has now been long considered a centre of cultural excellence and the Festival continues to grow as a major attraction for national and international visitors.

Perhaps partly in response to this and to the low number in pupils, the university merged with University College in St. Andrews in 1897, which became a centre of medical, scientific and legal excellence.

The Academy's stated aim is to be " the national centre of excellence for leadership.

Its East Kilbride facility currently acts as a centre of excellence serving the UK utilities sector and as the call centre base responsible for handling all UK clients.

He was the painter of city views par excellence: wooden foundation piles by the harbour, demolition work and construction sites in the old centre, horse trams on the Dam, or canals in the rain.

The PRG has traditionally been a centre of excellence in the field of formal methods, playing a leading role in the development of the Z notation ( initiated by a visit of Jean-Raymond Abrial ) and CSP ( together with the associated Occam programming language ).

NPL is an internationally respected centre of excellence in measurement and materials science.

The MSSI was established in 1998 and is a national centre of excellence that generates state-of-the-art fundamental research on topics of industrial significance in the fields of surface science and materials.

As well as of the GE Energy European headquarter and centre of excellence for the manufacturing of gas turbines.

Cardiff University continues the tradition of all three of its former institutions in providing high quality research-based education in Wales, as shown in its five year standing as the best centre of excellence in Wales in the Sunday Times League Tables.

This view was confirmed on the publication of the final report, which recommended that the City of London Police's Fraud Squad should be the national lead force in combatting fraud, to " act as a centre of excellence, disseminate best practice, give advice on complex inquiries in other regions, and assist with or direct the most complex of such investigations "

Renaissance architects included Alberti, Brunelleschi and Bramante. Many of these artists came from Florence and it remained an important centre for the Renaissance into the 16th century eventually to be overtaken by Rome and Venice.

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School ( GCCS ) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre.

A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC in later centuries on the rest of the then known European continent.

Aachen was the administrative centre for the coal-mining industries in neighbouring places to the northeast ; it never played any role in brown coal mining, however, neither in administrative or industrial terms.

The early 1960s and 1970s ( up until his death in 1976 ) were marked by key works in Helsinki, in particular the huge town plan for the void in centre of Helsinki adjacent to Töölö Bay and the vast railway yards, and marked on the edges by significant buildings such as the National Museum and the main railway station, both by Eliel Saarinen.

The second Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur ( 754 – 775 ) founded the city of Baghdad to act as a centre of learning, and included in its design a library-translation centre known as Bayt al-Hikma ‘ Storehouse of Wisdom ’, which continued to receive development from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic-Persian translations of Hellenistic astrological texts.

Kabul University was a centre for political debate and activism during that time.

During this period the Muslim world became an intellectual centre for science, philosophy, medicine and education as the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge and established the " House of Wisdom " ( Arabic: بيت الحكمة ) in Baghdad.

Nuremberg was then an important and prosperous city, a centre for publishing and many luxury trades.

One land, however, has eclipsed all others in the Aegean by the wealth of its remains of all the prehistoric ages — Crete ; and so much so that, for the present, we must regard it as the fountainhead of Aegean civilization, and probably for long its political and social centre.

It is a pilgrimage centre for the shrine of the Sufi Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and is also the base for visiting Pushkar ( 11 km ), an ancient Hindu pilgrimage city, famous for the temple of Brahma.

A tourist information office run by VisitScotland sits in the centre of town, offering free information, selling souvenirs and acting as a booking office for many of the local B & B's and hotels.

Abersychan was a thriving industrial centre in the 19th century and early 20th century, particularly for iron production.

One of the most important pieces of the regeneration jigsaw for the Borough is reviving Accrington town centre.

The town centre is a principal engine of economic revival not only for all communities across the Borough, but also for Pennine Lancashire.

The Council using funding from the Single Regeneration Budget appointed URBED ( Urban, Built, Environment Design ), consultants based in Manchester to help the Council, our partners and the local community develop a new vision for Accrington town centre.

Local landmarks include the Christie Park, the Fountain ( a traffic junction in the town centre, although there has not been a working fountain there for some years ),

Fierce hand-to-hand fighting gradually forced the French towards the village centre, in and around the walled churchyard which had been prepared for defence.

The time was about 16: 30, and the two armies were in close contact across the whole four-mile ( 6 km ) front, from the skirmishing in the marshes in the south, through the vast cavalry battle on the open plain ; to the fierce struggle for Ramillies at the centre, and to the north, where, around the cottages of Offus and Autre-Eglise, Orkney and de la Guiche faced each other across the Petite Gheete ready to renew hostilities.

The massive, reinforced concrete U-boat pens have proved impractical to demolish and are now partly used as a cultural centre for exhibitions.