At Old Market Square, the Council House watches over the city now, but Nottingham's story begins much earlier, with Edward the Elder taking the settlement in 919 AD and building a fortress on the south bank of the Trent. The name itself comes from Old English Snotingaham, the homestead of the Snotingas, though Norman influence later dropped the opening S. Even in Asser's Life of King Alfred, the place is marked out as Tigguocobauc, or cave house, a hint at the sandstone beneath the streets.

After the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror built Nottingham Castle and gave it to William Peverel. The Saxon town, once confined to the Lace Market, became the 'English Borough', while a 'French Borough' grew round the castle on the hill opposite. By the 12th and 13th centuries the town had ditches, banks and a stone wall, a small length of which still survives near Maid Marian Way. On Richard the Lionheart's return in 1194, supporters of Prince John, including the Sheriff of Nottingham, held the castle until Richard seized it in a sharp conflict.

The Black Death of 1349 is believed to have killed about 60% of Nottingham's people, yet migration from elsewhere in England helped it recover. By the 15th century the town was exporting Nottingham alabaster religious sculpture as far as Iceland, and in 1449 it became a county corporate, with self-government granted, in the charter's own words, 'for eternity'. In 1782 the traveller C. P. Moritz found it 'loveliest and neatest', with a broad centre and a bridge over the Trent.

Industry then remade the place. During the Industrial Revolution, lace manufacture made Nottingham internationally important, alongside the later bicycle and tobacco trades. In 1831, citizens rioted against the Duke of Newcastle's opposition to the Reform Act 1832 and burned his residence on the castle site. The city was reformed in 1835, enlarged in 1877 and made a county borough in 1889, before receiving city status on 18 June 1897, in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year, from the Marquess of Salisbury to the mayor.