Leeds City Museum for families

The Leeds City Museum is surprisingly engaging for children – the presentation is inventively interactive.

Why visit the Leeds City Museum

The Leeds City Museum is a fairly standard council-run museum in a major regional city. It covers a lot of subjects reasonably well, and is enjoyable enough to visit while in the city, while never getting close to being a proper tourist destination in its own right.

There are six main galleries spread across four floors in Leeds’ Millennium Square. The Leeds Story is the section with the most local identity, but the Life On Earth and Ancient Worlds sections are likely to be of most interest to those who aren’t particularly bothered about where they are.

What the Leeds City Museum does really, really well is presenting subjects that may well be covered in other museums in an attention-grabbing, playful way. In the Life On Earth section, for example, the standard stuffed animals are accompanied by a boat you can move around to show how creatures like Chinese mitten crabs travel from place to place.

Leeds City Museum with kids

It’s this presentation that keeps children engaged at the Leeds City Museum. One minute they’re investigating with magnifying glasses, the next they’re delving in piles of wood chip to find fossils. Then they can reconstruct replica ancient pots like jigsaws and create their own temples from building blocks.

One other thing Leeds City Museum does well is the kid-centric special events that it puts on, whether Halloween trails, craft sessions or Latin dance workshops. Check out the What’s On section of the museum website for the list of activities and the dates they’re running.

Leeds City Museum review: The best bit

In the Ancient Worlds section of the Leeds City Museum, there’s a bit where kids are encouraged to write their own name in Greek, after being guided through the alphabet. It’s simple but wonderfully effective – children show the bit of paper with their name on it with endearing levels of pride.

Infants, juniors or secondary?

For older children, the Leeds City Museum will probably be a little bit old hat – although they will almost certainly learn something while trudging around. For infants and juniors, though, the efforts put into presentation should have them interacting and wanting to stay in the sections you’d least expect.

Leeds City Museum entry prices

Leeds City Museum is free to enter, although donations are encouraged.

Prices were last checked and updated on 8 October 2024.

Full day, half day or a couple of hours?

You can get a good half day out of Leeds City Museum, particularly if doing one of the special activities.

Attractions near Higger Tor

Nearby attractions that can be combined with a visit to Leeds City Museum include:

• The Royal Armouries in Leeds.
• Tropical World in Roundhay Park.
• Harewood House in Leeds.

Nearby cities

Leeds City Museum on Millennium Square in central Leeds.

Other cities within a 90 minute drive of Leeds City Museum include Manchester, Sheffield, York, Bradford, Wakefield, Hull and Preston.

Is it open on Mondays?

Leeds City Museum is, unfortunately, closed on Mondays – although open on bank holiday Mondays. So, if your teacher training day falls on a Monday, it’s not going to work here.

More information

For more information, visit the Leeds City Museum website.