Manchester Museums and Galleries: Where to Go for a Treat After Your Visit

Manchester Craft and Design Centre has supported independent designers and makers in the Northern Quarter for over 40 years. Its Victorian building on Oak Street was built in 1873 as a fish market, part of the Smithfield Markets, and opened as Manchester Craft Village in 1982 after a four-year restoration. Today it houses 20 studios, where craftspeople make and sell their work on site.

Browse handmade jewellery, textiles, ceramics, glass, prints, accessories and homeware from makers across the region. The centre also runs a free exhibitions programme celebrating regional, national and international craft, plus regular craft workshops. It opens Monday to Saturday and on the second Sunday of the month.

The National Football Museum is in the Urbis building on Cathedral Gardens in Manchester city centre. It first opened in Preston in 2001 and moved to the Urbis building in 2012. It is home to the world's largest public collection of football objects and archives, with over 40,000 items, around 2,500 of which are on display in Manchester at any one time.

Highlights include the Laws of the Game from 1863, the world's first international football shirt from 1872, and objects that tell the story of women's football and its pioneers. Across four floors you can also try interactive Football+ games such as Pass Master, Shot Stopper and Penalty Shootout. A ticket bought from the museum gives you unlimited visits for a whole year.

Manchester Art Gallery has been part of city life for 200 years, growing from the Royal Manchester Institution for the Promotion of Literature, Science and the Arts, founded in 1823. The institution's Greek Revival building on the corner of Mosley Street and Princess Street was designed by Charles Barry and opened in 1835. The building and its collection passed to the city in 1882, and entry is free and open to all.

The gallery's fine art collection is especially strong in Pre-Raphaelite works, and sits alongside ceramics, silver, glass and furniture from its craft and design collection. Its costume and textiles collection traces the history of dress from 1600 onwards. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, plus Bank Holiday Mondays.

People's History Museum is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of how democracy developed in Britain, from revolutions and Peterloo to the campaigns and movements still shaping it today. It was founded in London in 1975 and moved to Manchester in 1990. It is housed in a Grade II listed Edwardian Pump House, built between 1907 and 1909, on Left Bank in Spinningfields beside the River Irwell, joined to a 2009 extension that was the first public building in Manchester to use Cor-Ten steel.

The museum holds the largest collection of trade union and political banners in the world, including the Tin Plate Workers Society banner from around 1821, the world's oldest trade union banner. It also runs its own conservation studio and the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, which holds the archives of the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Entry is free, and the museum opens every day except Tuesday.

The Science and Industry Museum in Castlefield stands on the site of the oldest surviving passenger railway station, the original terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830. Part of the Science Museum Group, it tells the story of Manchester as the world's first industrial city, from the Industrial Revolution to today. The museum first opened in 1969 on Grosvenor Street in Chorlton-on-Medlock and reopened at Liverpool Road on 15 September 1983, the 153rd anniversary of the railway.

Its Grade I listed 1830 Warehouse was the world's first railway warehouse. Inside, you will find textile machinery from Manchester's cotton industry, historic engines in the Power Hall, railway heritage and interactive science exhibits for children. Entry is free, and the museum recommends booking tickets in advance.

Manchester Museum is part of the University of Manchester and has welcomed visitors to its Alfred Waterhouse building on Oxford Road since 1888. It cares for around 4.5 million objects from natural history and cultures around the world, and all of its galleries are free to enter. A major redevelopment, completed in February 2023, added new visitor facilities created with local communities.

Meet Stan the T. rex in the Dinosaur Gallery, and look for the critically endangered harlequin toad among the live amphibians and lizards in the Vivarium. You can also explore the Egypt and Sudan gallery, the South Asia Gallery and the Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery. The museum has a quiet room, a prayer room for all faiths and a Changing Places toilet. Its temporary exhibitions need booking in advance.