It's not surprising that Manchester offers such a good - and eclectic - choice of museums, given its famous industrial backdrop, proud football past, and countless illustrious previous residents.
Most of Manchester's museums offer free admission, like all major UK cities. Additionally, there is a venue for every interest, many of which are conveniently located in the city centre. Here is our list of museums in Manchester.
Where do we begin? Where else can you find a war museum that has won more than a dozen architectural and public awards? Where else can you learn everything about hat-making you've always wanted to know but were too afraid to inquire about? Let’s find out!
Get your aesthetic enjoyment
Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester is home to the Manchester Art Gallery. The museum displays decorative and applied art, fine art, and archaeology. The Designated Collection is one of the museum's primary topics, figures, and artworks. This museum in Manchester is filled with artwork at its best!
Address: Mosley Street, M2 3JL Manchester, England
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Portland Basin Museum
The Portland Basin Museum's centrepiece is a replica of a 1920s street, complete with a terrace home, school room, chippy, and pub, housed in the stunning 19th-century Ashton Canal Warehouse. Visit the changing exhibitions, go on a narrowboat tour on the canal, and learn more about the region's industrial past in mining, farming, and textile production. Making it one of the most historical museums in Manchester.
Address: Portland Pl, Ashton-under-Lyne OL7 0QA, UK.
Timings: 10:00 am to 4: 00 pm every day
The Pankhurst Centre
Another museum in Manchester is The Pankhurst Centre. The museum has displays of personalities. Suffragettes, women's rights, and Emmeline Pankhurst are important topics, figures, and exhibits in the museum.
Address: 60 - 62 Nelson Street, Chorlton on Medlock, M13 9WP Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, everyday
Gallery of Costume
Manchester's Gallery of Costume is a museum. This museum in Manchester has displays on clothing, textiles, and social history. A suit of her own: a history of the working woman's clothing is one of the museum's current exhibits, along with Quant to Westwood: Fashion since the Sixties, Living Color: Textiles and Embroideries from the Indian Subcontinent, and a Designated Collection.
Address: Platt Hall Wilmslow Road Rusholme, M14 5LL Manchester, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art
This museum in Manchester is the Center for Chinese Contemporary Art. The museum showcases fine art, decorative and applied art, film and media, performing arts, architecture, and design. Xu Bing, Liu xiao Xian, Dinu Li, Ming Wong, Gordon Cheung, He An, Anthony Lam, Guo Wei, He Duoling, Shaoyinong and Muchen, Community Museum Project, William Yang, ellinda Siu, Chun-Chao Chiu, and Suki Chan are some of the major themes, figures, and artefacts in the museum.
Address: Thomas Street, Market Buildings, M4 1EU Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
MMU Special Collections
The public is welcome to browse or research the collections, attend events, or view our exhibitions at Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, which also functions as a museum, gallery, and reading room. Three shows a year are held in the Special Collections Gallery, featuring collections and creations by well-known local and worldwide artists. Due to the vast collection of artefacts and art pieces, this could be considered in an informative and educational museum in Manchester.
Address: Sir Kenneth Green Library All Saints, M15 6BH Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Holden Gallery
The Holden Gallery at Manchester Metropolitan University, which boasts an illustrious history spanning more than a century, presents a regular schedule of exhibitions that are free and accessible to the general public. This museum in manchester is a significant exhibitor of staff and student work and the venue for the annual BA and MA Degree Shows.
Address: Grosvenor Building, Cavendish Street, M15 6BR Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Victoria Bath
Manchester's Victoria Baths is one of the most beautiful museums in Manchester. Decorative and applied art, fine art, archives, sport, social history, film and media, music, and performing arts are all represented in the museum's displays.
Address: Hathersage Road, Chorlton on Medlock, M13 0FE Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives
A museum called the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives is located in Manchester's Northern Quarter. This museum in Manchester has displays on clothing and textiles, land transportation, social history, weaponry and conflict, individuals, photography, coins and medals, and war.
Address: 57a Newton Street, M1 1ET M.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Whitworth Art Gallery
Manchester, England's Whitworth, houses an art gallery with a collection of over 55,000 pieces. The gallery is a part of the University of Manchester and is situated in Whitworth Park.
After undergoing a £15 million capital makeover that increased its display area, restored period details, and opened itself up to its neighbouring park, the Whitworth reopened in 2015. More than 440,000 people visited the gallery in its first year, and the Art Fund gave it the 2015 Museum of the Year award. This museum in Manchester has over 55,000 works of art that makeup Whitworth Art Gallery's important collection.
Address: Oxford Road, The University of Manchester, M15 6ER Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Staircase House
A renovated townhouse called Staircase House is located in Stockport's old market. The mansion is renowned for its historic 1618 cage newell staircase. From its humble beginnings as a mediaeval cruck-framed building in 1460 to the splendour of the 17th-century townhouse ending in WWII, take a journey through time. Visitors will walk through historical chambers on their journey. Visitors are welcome to touch the items and furniture in the house and participate in any available activities because it is completely interactive. Making it one of the eldest yet most beautiful museums in Manchester.
Address: 30-31 Market Place, SK1 1ES Stockport, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
SEA LIFE Manchester
You may enter the fascinating underwater world thanks to SEA LIFE Manchester Aquarium. Get ready for up-close encounters with everything from modest starfish and seahorses to graceful rays and vital sharks. The aquarium is ideal for family entertainment because it has an amazing ocean tunnel, 30 display tanks, and more than 5,000 sea creatures! You would have to get wet to get any closer! This is just one of the reasons why Sea life is one of the most interactive museums in Manchester, you’ll have to visit it to find out more reasons!
Address: Trafford Centre, Barton Square Bridge, Stretford, M17 8AS Manchester, England.
Timing: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
Salford Museum & Art Gallery
Salford is home to the Salford Museum and Art Gallery. The museum has displays on archaeology, fine art, music, land transportation, decorative and applied art, personalities, medicine, coins and medals, costume and textiles, and social history. The museum's focal points include Landau Carriages, Salford Local History Library, and Lark Hill Place: Victorian Street.
Address: Peel Park The Crescent, M5 4WU Salford, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Dig deeper
Manchester Museum
We like to refer to this as Jurassic park in our list of museums in Manchester. As it features live reptiles and amphibians as well as mummies and dinosaurs. Archives, religion, clothing and textiles, coins and medals, decorative and applied art, medicine, natural sciences, social history, archaeology, world cultures, and weapons and war are just a few of the topics covered by the exhibits at Manchester Museum. The vivarium with live snakes, frogs, and other reptiles, the designated collection, ancient Egypt, spider crabs, and t. Some of the museum's central themes, figures, and exhibits are rex.
Address: Oxford Road, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL Manchester, England
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
People's History Museum
Every city has a museum with a few pieces of notable painters and old artefacts that were either stolen from past colonies or originally belonged to wealthy white males. Still, only this museum in Manchester has been devoted to the history of democracy, radicalism, equality, and social justice. The Peterloo Massacre in 1819 and modern democracy are chronicled in the People's History Museum. Every year, the museum offers top-notch lectures and workshops, and starting in 2020, a new augmented reality display will be available.
Address: Left Bank Spinningfields, M3 3ER Manchester, England
Timings: 10.00 am to 5.00 pm, every day, closed on Tuesdays.
Hat Works
Does Stockport belong to Manchester? Do people even care? What matters is Hat Works, the fantastically bizarre museum in Manchester was once-thriving hat manufacturing in Stockport. Most people recognise it by the enormous brick chimney that signals to rail passengers coming in from the south that Piccadilly is only ten minutes away. But it's also worth getting off a stop early to see the museum's enormous collection of Victorian equipment, interactive displays, and hundreds of hats from around the world.
Address: Wellington Road South, Wellington Mill, SK3 0EU Stockport, England
Timings: 10.00 am to 5.00 pm, every day, closed on Mondays.
Imperial War Museum North
The Daniel Libeskind-designed Imperial War Museum in Manchester North is a world-renowned immersive experience, architectural marvel, and centre for cutting-edge research that is meant to be both terrifying and enlightening. It is nearly hard to observe the museum in a lazy, passive manner due to its peculiar, almost unsettling arrangement. It is one of Europe's most poignant and moving war museums due to its location in Trafford Park, a vital munitions hub and the primary target of the Manchester Blitz, as well as its imposing silhouette on the city's skyline.
Address: Trafford Wharf Rd, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 1TZ, UK.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Manchester Jewish Museum
This museum in Manchester is located in the centre of the city. The Manchester Jewish Museum is decorative and applied art, costume and textiles, social history, archives, architecture, world cultures, religion, personalities, and fine art. These are the topics covered by the museum's displays.
Address: 190 Cheetham Hill Road, M8 8LW Manchester, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Elizabeth Gaskell's House
Welcome to the beautifully restored Victorian house museum in Manchester, of North and South, Cranford, and Mary Barton author Elizabeth Gaskell. Visit the Victorian-style garden, Tea Room, and shop to discover more about the lives of the Gaskell family, the home's restoration, and Elizabeth's literary career. Take the chance to peruse through the books in William Gaskell's study and sit where Elizabeth once did while writing with her favourite garden in the background. Most of the furniture and items are touchable and usable, offering a unique opportunity for hands-on learning.
Address: 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester, M13 9LW Manchester, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Heaton Hall
Another museum in Manchester is Heathon Hall. The museum displays fine art, decorative and applied art and architecture. The Designated Collection is one of the museum's primary topics, figures, and artworks.
Address: Heaton Park Prestwich, M25 2SW Manchester, England
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, everyday
East Lancashire Museum of Freemasonry
The Manchester Masonic Museum is committed to advancing the ideals of Freemasonry in the North West of England and igniting discussion about its history. Since the building's completion in 1929, the collection has been kept at Freemasons' Hall in Manchester. It has a wide variety of artefacts that date back to the mid-1700s, making it one of the oldest museums in Manchester.
Address: Freemasons' Hall 36 Bridge Street, M3 3BT Manchester, England.
Timings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, every day
A place for everything
The Manchester City F.C Museum and Stadium Tour
Another attraction in our list of museums in Manchester is the Manchester City F.C. Museum and Stadium Tour. The museum has displays about people, sports, and social history. The history of Manchester City Football Club is one of the museum's major topics, subjects, and exhibits.
Address: Etihad Stadium Etihad Campus, M11 3FF Manchester, England
Timings: Everyday 9:30 am - 4 pm
National Football Museum
This four-floor temple to football, housed inside the former URBIS museum, one of Manchester's most stunning contemporary structures, boasts the largest football collection in the world. It is the permanent residence for the FIFA, Football League, and FA collections, among many other collections. It aims to preserve and conserve such artefacts. The Sleeping Beckham artwork by Sam Taylor Wood, Maradona's "hand of god" match shirt from 1986, the 1966 world cup ball, and 1906 postcards depicting female football players are all on display. Making is one of the most prestigious museums in Manchester.
Address: Cathedral Gardens, M4 3BG Manchester, England
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester
Manchester is home to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester. This museum in Manchester has displays on land transportation, social history, and archives. the greater Manchester, Lancashire united, public transportation, ticket machine, northwestern, bus conductor, trolleybus, Ramsbottom, manchester, shmd board, Metrolink, Stockport, Trafford, Rochdale, Salford, videmat, Bolton, Ashton, Oldham, ticket, Wigan, Leigh, tram, bury, and bus are some of the major subjects covered in the museum.
Address: Boyle Street, Cheetham, M8 8UW Cheetham Hill, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
Museum of Science and Industry
Our first museum in Manchester is called the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum has exhibitions on trade and business, aviation, land transportation, ornamental and applied art, personalities, and costume and textiles. It also has displays on photography, archives, science, and technology. The designated collection is one of the museum's major themes, subjects, and displays.
Address: Liverpool Road, Castlefield, M3 4FP Manchester, England.
Timings: Everyday 10 am - 5 pm
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Manchester is home to culture, history, football and lively life! There are so many things to do in Manchester that will leave you in awe of the city. If you are a tourist looking to explore the city, you’ll find gems that no other country will offer. The city has ravishing nightlife with some of the best clubs, not just the museums in Manchester.
Being a student, you are in for a ride, as this city will teach you a lot by preparing you for your future in the best way. Don’t forget to read this housing guide Manchester.
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