Top Yorkshire museums

The Jorvik Viking Centre is a sure highlight to any visit to York. It has welcomed over 20 million visitors since opening in the 1980s and keeps on attracting tourists. The centre shows York street life in 975 AD. There are plenty of exhibits, a huge array of Viking artefacts and art galleries to discover. You’ll have a fun time taking a journey through the reconstructed Viking-age streets. Enjoy finding out all about Viking life with who else other than a Viking warrior - something kids will particularly enjoy!

Head over to pretty Harrogate for one of the best museums in Yorkshire. Just along from the Royal Baths stands the Royal Pump Room. It was built in 1842 over the sulphur well that feeds the baths. Today it houses a small local museum with eclectic exhibits from Victorian bikes to an Egyptian collection. The town’s earliest surviving spa building, the old Promenade Room of 1806 is just 100yds from the Pump Room on Swan Road. Here you can find the Mercer Art Gallery and its home to changing fine art exhibitions. The nearby 17-acre Valley Gardens are a delightful place to stretch your legs.

Are you much of a reader? Yes. Like the Bronte's literature? Sure. Then this is the best museum in Yorkshire for you. Behind the parish church is the Brontë Parsonage Museum, a modest Georgian house bought by Patrick Brontë in 1820 and in which he planned to bring up his family. After the tragic early loss of his wife and two eldest daughters, the surviving four children - Anne, Emily, Charlotte and their dissipated brother, Branwell - spent most of their short lives in the place, which is furnished as it was in their day. Filled with the sisters’ pictures, books, manuscripts and personal treasures, it’s one of the most interesting museums in Yorkshire for literary fans. The parish church in front of the parsonage contains the family vault. Fans will know that Charlotte was married here in 1854.

The main interest in the centre of Bradford is provided by the superb National Science and Media Museum. It wraps itself around one of Britain’s largest cinema screens showing daily IMAX and 3D film screenings. Exhibitions are devoted to every nuance of film and television, including topics like digital imaging, light and optics. If you like computer animation, you’re in for a real treat here. Explore fascinating detours into the mechanics of advertising and news-gathering, too.

Head to Leeds for one of the finest museums in Yorkshire. On the south side of the riverbank beckons the spectacular glass turret and gunmetal grey bulk of the Royal Armouries, purpose-built to house the arms and armour collection from the Tower of London. One of the best museums in Yorkshire of its type, and in fact in the world, its five enormous galleries hold a grand collection of items. Beautifully displayed. weapons for war, tournaments and armour and other artefacts dating from Roman times onwards can all be found. Particularly spectacular is the Indian elephant armour (the heaviest armour in the world) consisting of 8500 iron plates.

One of the most unique Yorkshire museums is its National Coal Mining Museum . While the gentry enjoyed the comforts of life in grand houses like Harewood, just a few miles away generations of Yorkshiremen sweated out a living underground. Mining is now little more than a memory in most parts of Yorkshire, but visitors can get all too vivid an idea of pit life through the ages. Based in a former pit, Caphouse Colliery, the highlight is an underground mine tour (warm clothes are definitely required!) with who else other than a former miner as your guide. Searching for Yorkshire holidays? We recommend staying in the Yorkshire Dales to really appreciate the glorious landscape of the region.