The A4053 is the Coventry Ring road and encompasses the old and new Coventry Cathedrals, Coventry University, West Orchard and Cathedral Lanes Shopping Centres, Coventry Skydome Arena, and many other businesses.

Unlike many other city centre ring roads, Coventry ring road is made up of entirely grade-separated junctions except for one roundabout, this leads to the junctions being extremely close together and in effect one junction leads into another at many points.

After the Second World War, during which most of Coventry city centre was destroyed by the Luftwaffe, the rising level of traffic on the city's roads resulted in plans for the narrow city centre streets to be bypassed with a circular ring road, a type of road which was soon to be commonplace in cities and towns across the United Kingdom. Construction began in the late 1950s and the first phase was ready in 1962, but was not fully completed until 1974, 12 years after the first section of ring road opened and some 20 years after the ring road was first planned. [1]