Manchester Museum, March 2025

After spending so long looking at Lego at Bricktastic 2025, our plan to visit Manchester Museum on the same day was a bust. We did, however, manage to get back to Manchester a few weeks later for a visit.

Manchester Museum is on Oxford Road, next to the university and just opposite from Manchester Academy music venue. If you’re travelling by car, make sure not to drive on Oxford Road. It’s mainly buses only now and you’ll get a fine!

We parked in the Booth Street West car park just behind the museum, just a 2-minute walk away, but there are other car parks near by at the Academy (Cecil Street), which we’ve used many times over the years for parking at gigs. Parking cost us £7.70 for the few hours we were there.

As with many museums, entry into Manchester Museum is free, but donations are generally expected. The counter recommended £5 or suggested purchasing one of the guide books for £3, so we opted for the guide book.

The museum is divided into several Galleries including Egypt & Sudan, the Living World & Natures Library, the Vivarium, Collections Reimagined, South Asia and the exhibition hall, which was currently home to ‘Wild’.

An exhibition of nature and our connection with it. Plenty of artwork, paintings, drawings and photos from different aspects of nature. Wild had some interactive areas and activities for the kids where they could feel the textures of nature and hang their own ‘what does nature mean to you’ drawings on the wall. Elliott drew Godzilla, because… Elliott. The room also had a collection of land and sea animal exhibits from around the world.

Belonging was an exhibition of comics written/drawn by 20 international artists depicting ‘belonging’ in different cultures.

A collection of artefacts, pottery, clothing, carvings, animals, symbols and designs from Chinese culture. The starlight ceiling display in here looks great too!

Displays of South Asia and British Asian culture. There is a brilliant, colourful mural along the wall at the entrance to the exhibit, plus lots of photos, masks, documents, statues and relics inside. The kids loved the decorated bike!

A changeable gallery of small cabinets containing different collections of items.

Unexpected, but amongst all the artefacts and historical items they have a Vivarium with a collection of live reptiles, amphibians and endangered species. It certainly kept us entertained.

A large 2-floor gallery full of cabinets, with each telling a different story. Many of the cabinets featured animal and human skeletons, rocks and insects, plus displays of ‘Peace’, ‘Climate’, ‘Disasters’ and ‘Symbols’. All of this is overlooked by the giant skeleton of a Sperm Whale overhead.

Our favourite area. We all love dinosaurs, and this area had some brilliant displays of the planet’s history, featuring a 300 million year old tree fossil, Percy, the Plesiosaur fossil and April the Tenontosaurus amongst cabinets filled with bones and information. And lest we forget Stan – the giant T-Rex skeleton looming over the room!

Whilst I don’t know much about it, I find Egyptian history quite interesting, so I enjoyed this area. A great collection of potteries, tools, masks, stone carvings, jewellery and artwork from across Egypt and Sudan. There were even some amazing looking Egyptian sarcophagi (sarcophaguses? sarcophageese?)

Manchester Museum has a small coffee bar in the main foyer serving drinks and cakes. The main café serves an array of Vegan/Vegetarian foods like sandwiches, quiche, vegan sausage rolls, plus hot and cold drinks. Prices were reasonable and the food was good. Evan tried the vegan sausage roll while me and Jo shared one of the cheese and pickle baguettes. Elliott went straight for the cakes. All quite tasty, but nothing special.

There was also a picnic area if you had your own food and drink too.

Wouldn’t be complete without a gift shop, would it? It was quite a large shop that you had to pass on your way in and out of the museum, with quite a collection of items on offer at varying price points. Lots of kids items like dinosaur pop badges, wooden toys and plushes, art prints, postcards, books, ornaments and more. And yes, we got another fridge magnet.

We’d done a lap, had some food in the café and seen all we could, so we took one final lap of Dinosaurs (because massive T-Rex) before heading home.

Whilst I’m not usually a fan of a museum, Manchester Museum did keep us interested. I love Egyptian things, the kids love dinosaurs and animals, so there was plenty to see in that regard, plus some small activities that the kids could do to break it up. Evan also enjoyed seeing some of the more ‘grown up’ exhibits, like the Chinese Culture section, which isn’t something we get to see on a daily basis. And whilst Elliott enjoyed the dinosaurs and drawing in the ‘Wild’ exhibit, some of the exhibits were understandably not for him, and he was also put off by some of the dead animals around.

The Vivarium did help with the enjoyment though. Not the usual kind of exhibit you’d expect in a museum, but a welcome change.

Overall, it was a fun day out at Manchester Museum, definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area. Find full details at the official Manchester Museum Website