Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum was founded in 1816 from the bequest of Richard, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, and the tradition of philanthropy has supported the Museum to flourish as a place of knowledge, inspiration, and beauty ever since.
Research, education, conservation, acquisitions, exhibitions, and collections care have been made possible through acts of generosity.
Admission to the museum is free and we welcome 400,000 visitors per year through our doors, plus over 430,000 users to our website. We are a charity and rely on supporters and donors to help us achieve our purpose:
To contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest levels.
To preserve and extend our world-class collections.
Imperial War Museum Duxford
Visit Imperial War Museum Duxford for a huge day out. See Spitfires take to the skies from the airfield where they first flew, get up close to gigantic aircraft and walk in the footsteps of the men and women who served here.
From the early days of flight, through to the dramatic days of the Second World War and the technological advances of the Cold War, IWM Duxford has played a central role in some of the most significant periods of 20th century history.
Inside every hangar and exhibition, you’ll discover iconic aircraft, see historic objects from our collections and uncover hundreds of personal stories of the many lives impacted by conflict.
Kettle’s Yard
Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful House with a remarkable collection of modern art and a gallery that hosts modern and contemporary art exhibitions.
Kettle’s Yard is open Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm.
Museum of Science and Technology
Cambridge Museum of Technology is the home of our industrial heritage. Learn about the story of sewage and waste disposal in the Victorian Pumping Station. Discover Cambridge’s forgotten industries in the Top Bay. Marvel at the town’s early high-tech companies in the Pye Building. Explore our industrial heritage around the site. Enjoy great coffee from Kerb Kollective, our on-site partner or pop back in the evening for a beer and pizza in the Engineers House.
Museum of Zoology
The Museum is one of Cambridge’s major attractions, displaying thousands of specimens spanning the entire animal kingdom, from elephants, giant ground sloths and giraffes, to birds, reptiles, insects, and molluscs. It is part of the University of Cambridge Department of Zoology and welcomes over 100,000 visitors every year. Entry to the Museum is free.
Our collections are amongst the best in the world. As well as being open for the public to enjoy, they are used for academic study by researchers and students worldwide.
The Museum holds many wonderful treasures, such as specimens discovered by the great naturalists, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. The collection contains approximately two million items and thousands of these are on display. Changing displays and temporary exhibitions highlight unusual and significant items from the Museum’s stores, such as the skeleton of the extinct Dodo.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
MAA is a museum of humanity’s history over hundreds of thousands of years, of world cultures over recent centuries, and of Indigenous life and art in the present.
MAA is also a local museum. For nearly 140 years it has been the place where archaeological finds from Cambridge and from our region are preserved, researched, and displayed.
Locally and globally, it is a revelation of people’s stories, through extraordinary things they have made, past and present.
Museum of Cambridge
Visit us and explore over 300 years of Cambridgeshire history and heritage. Our museum has something for everyone, and our collections include objects related to the everyday life, customs, and traditions of the local people of the area.
We love the way that objects can help us to reflect on our histories. They bear marks that help us to appreciate their makers, their owners, and their users. The stories that they share can still have meaning today. We want to understand those stories and to continue making connections between the past and the present by collecting peoples’ stories today.
Folklorist Enid Porter was the longest serving Museum curator (1947-1976) and her work characterises our collection. She collected and preserved local heritage for future generations, recording people’s stories and memories. Porter also shaped modern English folklore studies. We are reviving her ethos and ideas through projects exploring more recent, diverse heritage, reflecting, and recording stories of development and change.
The Polar Museum
The Scott Polar Research Institute, established in 1920 as part of the University of Cambridge, is a centre of excellence in the study of the Arctic and Antarctic. Research covers both the natural and social sciences and is often interdisciplinary. The Institute also houses the World’s premier Polar Library, extensive archival, photographic and object collections of international importance on the history of polar exploration, and a Polar Museum with displays of both the history and contemporary significance of the Arctic and Antarctic and their surrounding seas. The Institute is a sub-department of the Department of Geography.
SPRI’s mission is to enhance the understanding of the polar regions through scholarly research and publication, educating new generations of polar researchers, caring for and making accessible its collections (including its library, archival, photographic and object collections), and projecting the history and environmental significance of the polar regions to the wider community for public benefit.
The Centre for Computing History
The Centre for Computing History (CCH) is a pioneering educational charity that opened at its current site in Cambridge in August 2013. CCH was established as an educational charity to tell the story of the Information Age through exploring the historical, social, and cultural impact of developments in personal computing. It maintains a long-term collection of objects to tell this story and exploits them through education and events programmes.
Whipple Museum of The History of Science
The Whipple Museum’s collection includes scientific instruments, apparatus, models, pictures, prints, photographs, books, and other material related to the history of science. Find out more about the history of our building and the founding of the museum in this section.
The museum’s holdings are particularly strong in material dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, especially objects produced by English instrument makers, although the collection contains objects dating from the medieval period to the present day. Instruments of astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing, and calculating are well represented, as are sundials, mathematical instruments, and early electrical apparatus.
The Whipple Museum was founded in 1944 when Robert Stewart Whipple presented his collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge.
Too much to do in one day, why not stay the night – Check out the range of accommodation Cambridge has to offer
