Top York museums

What’s the first museum to see in York? The Yorkshire Museum of course! This is one of the most unique museums in York. In the beautiful Museum Gardens, next to the romantic ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, sits the majestic Grade I listed building. Five exciting, hands-on galleries comprise the “History of York”, a multiscreen, audiovisual display. Next is “Extinct”, which covers dinosaurs and more recently extinct creatures and “Meet the People of the Empire” (Roman York). Follow through to the “Power and the Glory” (Medieval York) and “Enquiry” and learn about how archeology and science can uncover the past.

One of the best museums in York is Jorvik. A major highlight for the city, you’ll find excavations of Coppergate in 1976 uncovered York’s original Viking settlement, now largely buried beneath a shopping centre. But at adjacent Jorvik, visitors are propelled in “time capsules” on a ride through a reconstructed version of the tenth-century Viking city. You’ll be immersed in the sights, sounds and even the smells of the times. You also get to see how artefacts unearthed from the original site were used. You can watch live-action domestic scenes on actual Viking-age streets, with axe-fighting and other attractions.

Housed in what was once a couple of prisons, displays in the wonderfully inventive Castle Museum begin with a series of period rooms from the seventeenth century to the 1980s. There’s a large room devoted to Victorian attitudes to birth, marriage and death. This is all followed by a wonderful reconstruction of the sights and sounds of York’s Kirkgate during the final years of the nineteenth century. Don’t forget to spot the staff dressed-in authentic costume! There are displays, too, of period kitchens, plus a superb re-creation of the fashion, music and news stories of the 1960s. Finally, the cells in the basement of the prison building contain an affecting series of real-life stories. They’re told by video recordings of actors projected onto cell walls, gleaned from the prison’s records.

One of the most impressive York museums is the National Railway Museum. It’s a must if you have even the slightest interest in railways, history, engineering or Victoriana. The Great Hall alone features some fifty restored locomotives dating from 1829 onwards, among them Mallard, at 126mph the fastest steam engine ever built. After a lengthy on-site £4.2 million restoration, the Flying Scotsman is back on the tracks as a working exhibit. Engines aside, you can’t help but love the sheer Britishness of the Station Hall with its Royal carriages, railway memorabilia and real-life stories. Hop aboard!

Step through an alley known as Coffee Yard (opposite Ye Olde Starre Inne) to find Barley Hall, a fine restoration of a late medieval townhouse. It features a lively museum where you can learn about fifteenth-century life by, among other things, playing period games and trying on costumes. Barley Hall is one of the Jorvik group of attractions.

Where Jorvik shows what was unearthed at Coppergate, the associated attraction that is Jorvik Dig illustrates the science involved. Housed five minutes’ walk away from the museum, in the medieval church of St Saviour, on St Saviourgate, a simulated dig allows children to take part in a range of excavations in the company of archeologists. Kids will love using the authentic tools and methods of this period of time. There’s an on-site exhibition Looking Back at Hungate, which has some interesting artefacts from a five-year archeological excavation of local Roman, Viking and medieval remains.