Member guide

Cambridge museums and galleries: a guide to 12 collections

The Fitzwilliam, Kettle's Yard, the university's science and archaeology museums and the city's own history: what each holds, what it costs, and how to see several in a day.

By the Cambridge Society editorial desk · Updated 14 September 2026

The columned facade of the Fitzwilliam Museum on Trumpington Street

Most of Cambridge's museums belong to the university. The University of Cambridge Museums consortium brings together eight museums and the Botanic Garden: the Fitzwilliam, Kettle's Yard, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Polar Museum, the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, the Museum of Zoology, the Whipple Museum of the History of Science and the Museum of Classical Archaeology. Most of them are free to enter.

This guide covers those eight, the Botanic Garden, and two independent museums that complete the picture: the Museum of Cambridge and the Centre for Computing History. Opening days differ a great deal, and several museums close on Mondays or keep short hours, so check the table before you set out.

At a glance

Museum	What it holds	Entry	Opening times (September 2026)
Fitzwilliam Museum	art and antiquities, over half a million objects	free; some exhibitions ticketed	Tue–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 12–5pm
Kettle's Yard	the Edes' house and collection, plus exhibitions	house £14.50 adult, free for many; exhibitions free	Tue–Sun 11am–5pm
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	world archaeology and anthropology	free	Tue–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 12–5pm
Polar Museum	polar exploration and science	free	Tue–Sat 10am–4pm
Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences	rocks, minerals and fossils	see museum website	see museum website
Museum of Zoology	animal diversity, fin whale skeleton	free	Tue–Sat 10am–4.30pm, Sun 12–4.30pm
Whipple Museum	scientific instruments	see museum website	Mon–Fri 1–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm
Museum of Classical Archaeology	plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture	free	Tue–Fri 10am–5pm; Sat 2–5pm in term
Museum of Cambridge	social history of Cambridge and the Fens	£7 adult	Fri–Mon in term, Thu–Mon in school holidays
Centre for Computing History	computers and video games	see museum website	see museum website

Times are taken from each museum's own website in September 2026. They change for holidays and events, so confirm on the day.

The Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam is the art and antiquities museum of the university. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam, who left his collection and £100,000 to build a museum. The Founder's Building on Trumpington Street, designed by George Basevi and completed by C. R. Cockerell, opened in 1848. Today the museum holds over half a million objects, and its buildings are Grade I listed. Our architecture guide covers the building itself.

The museum has five departments: Antiquities; Applied Arts; Coins and Medals; Rare Manuscripts and Printed Books; and Paintings, Drawings and Prints. Highlights worth planning around:

Paintings by Titian, Veronese, Rubens, Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Canaletto, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Constable, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso.
Turner watercolours, beginning with a set of 25 given to the university by John Ruskin in 1861.
Cézanne's Still Life with Apples, part of the personal collection given by the economist John Maynard Keynes.
The Egyptian galleries, reopened in 2006 after refurbishment and among the museum's most popular rooms.
Music manuscripts, including a major collection of Elizabethan virginal music by William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tallis.

Entry is free. This autumn two exhibitions open: An Enamel Revolution: China and the World, free, from 20 October 2026; and A Call to Art: William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, 23 October 2026 to 3 May 2027, with tickets from £16. The museum is on Trumpington Street, about a 20-minute walk from the station, and the U bus stops outside.

Kettle's Yard

Kettle's Yard, on Castle Street, is the university's gallery of modern and contemporary art, and it is two things at once. The house was the home of Jim Ede, a former curator at the Tate, and his wife Helen. They moved to Cambridge in 1956 and turned four small cottages into one house to live in and to show Ede's collection of early 20th-century art. Ede kept an open house each afternoon, giving visitors, especially students, a personal tour. He gave the house and collection to the university in 1966.

The house is preserved as the Edes left it. The collection is largely British avant-garde art from the first half of the 20th century, with works by Constantin Brâncuși, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Barbara Hepworth, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood, arranged alongside found objects such as pebbles. In 1970 Leslie Martin added an exhibition gallery, and a project by Jamie Fobert Architects added an education wing, new galleries and a café, reopening in February 2018.

Practical notes:

House: timed tickets, £14.50 for adults, free for under-25s, University of Cambridge students and several other groups. Book online or on the day.
Exhibitions: free, with a separate ticket. Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now runs from 19 September 2026 to 31 January 2027.
Before you go: no bags are allowed in the house, there are no lockers, and the house is not fully wheelchair accessible. Last entry to the house is 4.15pm.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) describes its collection as two million years of human history and one million artefacts. It stands on the corner of Downing Street and Tennis Court Road. Founded in 1884, it moved to its present building in 1913, and reopened in 2013 after a major refurbishment with a new entrance on Downing Street.

The early collections came from the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and from Polynesia. Material from James Cook's voyages was deposited in the 1910s and 1920s, and more came from the 1898 Cambridge anthropological expedition to the Torres Strait led by Alfred Haddon and W. H. R. Rivers. The ground floor covers the archaeology of Cambridge, including a display on the Anglo-Saxon Trumpington bed burial, and the second floor holds world archaeology. The collections also include a Haida totem pole.

The gold and garnet Trumpington Cross on display — The Trumpington Cross, from the Anglo-Saxon bed burial found at Trumpington, on display at MAA. Photo: SpeakingArch, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The museum publishes its approach to requests for the return of objects, and supports research into the histories of its collections. Entry is free.

The Polar Museum

The Polar Museum is part of the Scott Polar Research Institute on Lensfield Road. The institute was founded by Frank Debenham in 1920 as the national memorial to Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions, who died on their return from the South Pole in 1912. It remains a working research centre for the Arctic and Antarctic.

The museum tells the story of polar exploration and science, and its collection includes art by Edward Wilson. Its online catalogue includes a dedicated collection of material on Sir Ernest Shackleton. The museum is free and open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm. Groups need to book.

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

The Sedgwick is the oldest of the university's museums and holds around two million rocks, minerals and fossils. It began with John Woodward, who collected nearly 10,000 specimens over 35 years and left part of his collection to the university. Several of his walnut cabinets are still in use. Adam Sedgwick expanded the collection, buying ichthyosaur skeletons from Mary Anning, and the present museum on Downing Street was built in his memory. King Edward VII attended its opening on 1 March 1904.

Carved stone decoration above the entrance of the Sedgwick Museum — Carved decoration over the entrance to the Sedgwick Museum on Downing Street. Photo: N Chadwick, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Look out for the Beagle collection: about 2,000 rocks and a few fossils collected by Charles Darwin on the voyage of HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836. The Sedgwick is on the same Downing Site as MAA, which makes the two an easy pairing.

Museum of Zoology

The Museum of Zoology occupies the David Attenborough Building on the New Museums Site. Enter through the Pembroke Arch on Downing Street. It reopened on 23 June 2018 after a major redevelopment supported by £1.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The skeleton of a fin whale suspended in the glass-walled Whale Hall — The fin whale skeleton in the Whale Hall of the Museum of Zoology. Photo: Emőke Dénes, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The museum's centrepiece is the 21-metre skeleton of a fin whale, which now hangs in the entrance Whale Hall. The collections are designated as being of outstanding historical and international importance. Much of the material comes from 19th-century collecting expeditions, and the museum holds animals from the Cambridge Philosophical Society, to which Charles Darwin contributed.

Entry is free. The museum opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 4.30pm and on Sundays from 12 to 4.30pm, and the Whale Café is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 3pm.

Whipple Museum of the History of Science

The Whipple is in the former Perse School building on Free School Lane. It was founded in 1944, when Robert Whipple, chairman of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, gave his collection of scientific instruments to the university. The collection is designated as being of national and international importance.

A brass armillary sphere of about 1450 in a display case — An armillary sphere of about 1450 at the Whipple Museum. Photo: The wub, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Its holdings are strongest from the 17th to the 19th centuries, especially objects by English instrument makers. Instruments for astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing and calculation are well represented, along with sundials and early electrical apparatus. The museum opens Monday to Friday from 1pm to 5pm and on Saturday from 10am to 5pm. It is closed on Sundays, so it is one of the few museums here worth planning for a Monday afternoon.

Museum of Classical Archaeology

On the first floor of the Faculty of Classics on the Sidgwick Site, the Museum of Classical Archaeology holds one of the few surviving collections of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture. It was founded in 1884 and moved to its purpose-built gallery in 1982.

Rows of white plaster casts of Greek statues in a bright gallery — Plaster casts of Greek sculpture in the Museum of Classical Archaeology. Photo: Zde, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The collection runs to several hundred casts, including the Laocoön and His Sons, the Farnese Hercules, the Barberini Faun and the Charioteer of Delphi. The best-known exhibit is the Peplos Kore, a statue of a young woman set up on the Athenian Acropolis around 530 BC. In 1975 the museum painted one cast as the original would have looked and displays it beside an unpainted cast, a challenge to the idea that Greek sculpture was pure white marble.

Entry is free. The museum opens Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm, and on Saturdays from 2pm to 5pm during university term. The current exhibition, poiēsis by Tom de Freston, runs until 17 October 2026.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden

The Botanic Garden was created for the university in 1831 by Professor John Stevens Henslow, Charles Darwin's mentor, and opened to the public in 1846. It covers 16 hectares (40 acres) and holds over 8,000 plant species, including nine National Collections. Our parks and green spaces guide covers it in more detail.

Museum of Cambridge

For the city rather than the university, visit the Museum of Cambridge, also on Castle Street. It occupies the former White Horse Inn, a Grade II listed 16th-century building that closed as a pub in 1934. The museum first opened in 1936 as the Cambridge & County Folk Museum.

Its collection of more than 20,000 objects covers the lives of people in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire and the Fens from 1700 onwards, from costumes and toys to inn signs. It is an independent charity and also runs Capturing Cambridge, a website that collects local history street by street. Adult tickets are £7. The museum opens Friday to Monday in term time and Thursday to Monday in the school holidays.

Centre for Computing History

The Centre for Computing History on Coldhams Road is a hands-on museum of personal computing and video games. It opened in 2013. Its displays run from early calculating machines to the Altair 8800, the ZX Spectrum and the Apple II, and it is home to the Megaprocessor, a record-breaking giant computer chip designed by James Newman. Check the centre's website for opening times and prices before visiting.

Planning a museum day

Several museums sit close together, so you can see two or three in a day:

Downing Street: MAA and the Sedgwick share the Downing Site. The Museum of Zoology is entered through the Pembroke Arch on the same street, and the Whipple's step-free back entrance is reached through the same arch.
Castle Street: Kettle's Yard and the Museum of Cambridge are both on Castle Street.
Trumpington Street and Lensfield Road: the Fitzwilliam and the Polar Museum are a short walk apart, south of the centre.
Sidgwick Site: the Museum of Classical Archaeology is west of the river, off West Road.

Mondays are the hardest day: the Fitzwilliam, MAA, the Polar Museum, the Museum of Zoology, Kettle's Yard and the Museum of Classical Archaeology are all closed. The Whipple (afternoons) and the Museum of Cambridge are open.

Frequently asked questions

Are Cambridge museums free?

Most are. The Fitzwilliam, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Polar Museum, the Museum of Zoology and the Museum of Classical Archaeology are free to enter. At Kettle's Yard the exhibitions are free, but the house needs a timed ticket, £14.50 for adults and free for under-25s. The Museum of Cambridge charges £7 for adults, and some special exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam are ticketed.

Which Cambridge museums are open on Mondays?

Few. The Whipple Museum opens from 1pm to 5pm on weekdays, and the Museum of Cambridge is open on Mondays. The Fitzwilliam, Kettle's Yard, MAA, the Polar Museum, the Museum of Zoology and the Museum of Classical Archaeology are closed.

What is the main art museum in Cambridge?

The Fitzwilliam Museum, the university's museum of art and antiquities, with over half a million objects. Entry is free. For modern and contemporary art, visit Kettle's Yard.

Where can I see Charles Darwin's specimens in Cambridge?

The Sedgwick Museum holds the Beagle collection of about 2,000 rocks and a few fossils Darwin collected between 1831 and 1836. The Museum of Zoology holds animals from the Cambridge Philosophical Society, to which Darwin contributed.

How many museums does the University of Cambridge have?

The University of Cambridge Museums consortium has eight museums plus the Botanic Garden: the Fitzwilliam, Kettle's Yard, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Polar Museum, the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, the Museum of Zoology, the Whipple Museum and the Museum of Classical Archaeology.

Glossary

Cambridge terms used in this article. Each links to its entry in our Cambridge A–Z.

Michaelmas, Lent and Easter terms: The three terms of the Cambridge academical year: Michaelmas in autumn, Lent in winter, Easter in spring.

Sources

Join the Society

This is an independent member's guide compiled by Cambridge Society. We are not affiliated with the venues and institutions mentioned; opening arrangements change, so always confirm details on the official websites before making plans.

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