This week, we travelled the short journey to Liverpool to visit the World Museum. We were there to take a look at their Return of the Gods exhibition, which is open until February 2024, but it felt rude not to have a look around the rest of the museum, because we do love a good museum.
World Museum is just 4 minutes walk from Liverpool Lime Street Station. It has five floors of exhibits and things to do, including; the worlds second oldest aquarium; the bug house; the Clore Natural History Centre; World Cultures; Ancient Egypt; Dinosaurs and the Natural World; Space and Time and they even have their own planetarium! It’s well thought out for families and there’s a large café, several indoor picnic areas if you bring your own food, a buggy park, lockers and toilets on every floor. The World Museum is free to enter and is open every day during the school holidays.
We decided to start at the top and work our way down, which seemed fairly logical. There are two lifts available, if you want to avoid the stairs, so that’s what we did. The fifth floor is home to the Space and Time exhibitions, as well as the planetarium. The planetarium hosts several shows a day, which you can book tickets to free of charge. Alas on the day we visited, the planetarium was out of action. The Space and Time floor is home to rockets, telescopes, Moon rock and models of the solar system, as well as examples of clock and watch craftsmanship from 1500s to the 1960s. There was also a film of Astronaut, Tim Peak which we sat and watched for a while. My son was excited to hold part of a meteorite and was surprised at how heavy it was.
We walked down to the fourth floor which is home to the dinosaurs and the natural world exhibition. Discover full size dinosaur skeletons and learn how these immense animals lived and died. There’s the Dino Diner display, which investigates dinosaur teeth, their food and even what they left behind as droppings. In the gallery are models of the very different dinosaurs which lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, together with dinosaur bones, dinosaur droppings and rare dinosaur eggs. This was understandably a very popular part of the World Museum.
On the third floor we discovered the Ancient Egypt gallery, which is something every school child learns about, so my son had lots to say about this. I always find it a bit eerie, so we didn’t linger for too long around the mummies. The gallery showcases 1200 objects from their ancient Egyptian and Nubian collection of around 20,000 items. The displays tell the story of Liverpool’s connections with excavations carried out in Egypt and Sudan, and how thousands of artefacts became part of the World Museum collection. You can also see objects which were damaged when the museum was wrecked by bombs in May 1941, which are now on display for the first time since the Second World War.
Moving on from Ancient Egypt, we explored the World Cultures Gallery, which was filled with artefacts from Africa, The Americas, Asia and Oceania. There’s an awful lot to see in this gallery, and I don’t feel we spent long enough here. There were some interesting displays about representation and how the gallery might evolve over the next few years to better represent cultures around the world. Certainly, a lot of museums need to look at their World Cultures content and review the provenance of their artefacts and how they are displayed. It was good to see World Museum taking the lead in this.
On that note, with legs tiring, we decided it was time for lunch. So we headed down to the café for something hearty to eat. My son, he of the newly giant appetite went for freshly cooked fish and chips (£9.95) and I opted for a bowl of rather delicious tomato and lentil soup and a bread roll. The café was large, with plenty of seating and the queue moved briskly. The food was good value and tasty, and set us up for another few hours of exploring.
After lunch, we headed back up to the second floor to explore the Bug House and the Clore Natural History Centre. The bug house was quite small and very popular, so we had a very quick look at some of the bugs in tanks and moved swiftly on to the Clore Natural History Centre. This was a real highlight for us. My son is very keen on the natural sciences and was very excited by the geology exhibits. He was also fascinated by some of the skeletons on display. They’re currently refreshing the exhibition, but there’s plenty to see, and we would go back just for this!
The first floor is home to the aquarium. Here you can meet sea creatures from around the world, from warm tropical seas, to the colder waters around Liverpool. The aquarium is home to fish, amphibians, terrapins and invertebrates, including octopus, crustaceans and coral. It’s the second oldest aquarium n the world, there’s been an aquarium at World Museum since 1857! The aquarium is fairly small, but there is lots to see. The octopus is very shy, but the terrapins, who are rescue pets make up for that and are a very popular addition to the aquarium.
We had such a lovely day out. We spent almost 4 hours exploring the World Museum, so it’s a great day out. Of course, we couldn’t leave without a visit to the shop. My geology loving boy came home with lots of rocks to learn more about at home. I have been conditioned from childhood to never leave a museum without buying a branded pencil, so that’s what I did.
It’s such a great museum. I am really pleased we visited Liverpool and took the time to have a proper look around. We both agreed on the way home that our favourite bit was the Clore Natural History Centre, but the whole museum is worth exploring, whatever your interest, there’s bound to be something you find exciting.
The World Museum is on William Brown St, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L3 8EN. For more information, visit their website.
