World Museum, Liverpool
Five floors, free, and it covers three things small children reliably love: giant dinosaurs, an aquarium and a space gallery. The best wet-weather day within half an hour.
Walker Art Gallery
- Cost
- Free entry
- Ages
- 2 to 11
- Where
- Liverpool, Merseyside
- Weather
- Works in the rain
- Booking
- Just turn up
One of the best fine-art collections in England outside London, and it costs nothing to walk in. The trick with children is Big Art for Little Artists, the ground-floor children's gallery designed for ages 0 to 5, with costumes, toys, books, games and a craft table whose theme changes every week. It turns a gallery visit from an ordeal of not-touching into something a four year old asks to repeat.
Do Big Art while everyone is fresh. Entry is by free ticket for a 45-minute session, half bookable online and half held back at the desk on the day. Then take whatever appetite remains upstairs, where the Victorian rooms are full of shipwrecks, battles and dogs, which is what primary-age taste in art actually is. The gallery opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, and is closed on Mondays outside the school holidays; from 3 November it closes at 4pm. The cafe is on the ground floor. An hour of Big Art plus an hour of wandering is a solid free morning.
What it costs: Entry is free. Special exhibitions and events may charge. Big Art for Little Artists is free by timed ticket. You pay only for the cafe and city-centre parking.
Know before you go
- Big Art for Little Artists runs 45-minute sessions between 11am and 3pm, fewer on term-time Tuesdays and Fridays (2pm only). Head there first and ask at the desk, then do the grown-up galleries after.
- It sits on William Brown Street next to World Museum and Central Library, so a rainy day can hop between all three without getting wet for more than a minute.
- Closed on Mondays except in the school holidays (open Monday 26 October, 21 and 28 December).
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