A visit one night into Charlotte proved a rewarding experience with the city a splash of colour.

We visited the East Coast head office of Wells Fargo and the title sponsor of this week’s Wells Fargo Championship where on display was a Wells Fargo stagecoach.

The city is a major U.S. financial center also for the Bank of America.

It is home also to the  Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Bobcats of the National Basketball Association, the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse, the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Carowinds amusement park, and the U.S. National Whitewater Center.

And later this month some 180,000 fans will pack into the Charlotte Motor Speedway for the running of the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600.

Nicknamed the Queen City, Charlotte and its resident county received its name in honor of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who had become queen consort of Great Britain the year before the city’s founding.

A second nickname derives from the American Revolutionary War, when British commander General Cornwallis occupied the city but was driven out by hostile residents, prompting him to write that Charlotte was “a hornet‘s nest of rebellion”, leading to the nickname The Hornet’s Nest.

Here is a selection of snaps from our visit to the ‘Queens City’

*  Click on snaps to open and then click again to enlarge.