Top 20 museums to visit this week - the ultimate guide
Ymwelydd yn Hepworth Wakefield, Amgueddfa'r Flwyddyn Art Fund 2017
With half-term in full swing and the Museums at Night festival starting today, here is a selection of our favourite day trips and events at National Lottery supported venues.
- Join expert, Paul Money, as he reveals the secrets of the night sky in the spectacular surroundings of the limestone gorge at Creswell Crags Museum.
- Are you brave enough for a Terror Tour at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham?
- Discover Norwich Castle Museum through digital interactives and experience a virtual medieval world.
- Meet Hope the blue whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum in London, as well as venture through 36 free galleries.
- Immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of the atmospheric rooms of the Charles Dickens Museum and see just what it was like to be in a Victorian house after dark.
- Explore the gardens by tourchlight at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens.
- Join the Whitworth youth group for an evening of discussion, poetry and workshops to celebrate Black History Month in Manchester.
- The Ulster Museum, Belfast, offers something for art lovers, history buffs, excited children and the curious. Poppies: Weeping Window is on display until 3 Dec.
- Edinburgh’s Surgeons’ Hall Museum’s HLF-supported project comes to a culmination this weekend in a walking tour with a twist. This is part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.
- Experience the thrill of entering Bletchley Park, once the top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers, as a new recruit.
- Hear a series of folklore and historical tales at the Weald & Downland Living Museum and discover 950 years of English rural life.
- Investigate and discover facts at The Roman Baths.
- St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff is an open air museum presenting the historical lifestyle, culture and architecture of the Welsh people – a great day out.
- There are over 40 galleries to explore at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery that display art, social history, archaeology and ethnography!
- Prepare for a spectacular evening of street performers, fire-jugglers, magicians and treats at the Black Country Living Museum.
- Discover ship models and artefacts from Hull’s whaling and fishing trade at Hull Maritime Museum. Hull is the UK City of Culture 2017, so there are plenty of great things to do.
- Visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum in the picturesque village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, once home to literary legends, the Bronte family.
- The Hepworth Wakefield gallery, 2017 Art Fund Museum of the Year, is a must see.
- On Saturday, catch the last weekend of late opening at the RIBA Sterling Prize-nominated Command of the Oceans galleries, The Historic Dockyards Chatham.
- Founded in 1966, the Modern Art Oxford recently celebrated its 50th birthday and is holding an evening of short films made by students from the University of Oxford’s Ruskin Art School.
Since 1994, HLF has awarded £2.41 billion to over 1,100 museums around the UK! See the full listings of Museums at Night events on the Museums at Night website.