Best Places to Visit in Manchester (United Kingdom)

Are you searching for the Best Places to Visit in Manchester? Are you thinking of a trip to Europe and wondering what to explore in Manchester? We’ve got you covered. There are plenty of great activities to enjoy during your time in Manchester to keep the whole family happy…especially those who love football!

The National Football Museum is the ultimate sports fan’s dream. Explore the story of football and discover your favorite players or legendary players as you walk. From famous stripes to unforgettable goals, it’s guaranteed to bring you great fun!

For those who are hardcore Manchester United fans, you can visit the backstage area at Old Trafford and see the field through the eyes of professional footballers with the 90-minute Manchester United Museum and Tour.

Take off your football boots and head back to your city to enjoy a few hours of LEGOLAND-style fun in bite-sized pieces. This LEGOLAND Discovery Centre offers a delicious taste of its sister attraction in Windsor. You can visit Merlin’s Magical Positivity Room. Go on one or two rides and explore the giant box of Legos featuring more than 2 million Legos!

Manchester family-friendly activities aren’t much better than the water-based variety (Ask Nemo). At Sea Life Manchester, you can see clownfish, feed giant turtles, and look for an eight-legged companion in the Octopus Hideout.

The excitement is sure to have made you work up some appetites. Therefore take a trip to Manchester Arndale, where you can peruse more than 250 shops and pick from a range of restaurants that will fill you up after a long, enjoyable day!

Are you interested in knowing the next school holiday date so that you can organize your family’s day out?

National Football Museum

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National Football Museum is one of the best places to visit in Manchester. The museum was inaugurated in July 2012, and the brand new National Football Museum is a significant milestone in the growth of Manchester football culture. The museum was initially situated in Preston, England.

The museum moved to the Urbis, the iconic building in Manchester, further protecting and expanding its awe-inspiring collections of documents covering the most significant moments of British and international football history. The museum has since become one of the most popular tourist destinations within the Manchester city center.

The museum is home to up to 140,000 football-related items, artworks, and photographs, which include football uniforms used by players from the 1872 World Cup and the final ball from the 1966 England World Cup. Also, there are numerous medals, trophies, and collectibles of folk from the English and Scottish soccer leagues.

The brand new National Football Museum aims to bring more football fans into the museum to preserve the sport’s history by informing the general public about the evolution of British football. The museum incorporates a variety of technologies that interact with the 21st century.

These include visitors being able to test their ability to react, speed to penalty techniques, and even live commentary, enhancing their knowledge of football.

Science and Industry Museum

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A delicious mixture of science, industry, and history makes this Science and Industry Museum an enjoyable and informative day out for adults and kids!

Explore the history of Manchester from the industrial revolution period to the present, all made real through engaging exhibitions, exciting presentations, and daily demonstrations by engaged, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic staff. Kids can run their experiments and watch the world of science unfold in front of their eyes, and there’s a wide range of activities for young ones between 0 and 4 years old.

Additional events, workshops, and festivals are available on weekends and during the school holidays, meaning you’ll always have something new to discover! There’s a cafe and shops on site to help you take your new fascination with science home!

  • Entry is free!
  • Wheelchairs are available

Open hours

  • Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 17:00
  • Closed 24th-26th December, 1st January

Canals of Castlefield

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Designated as Civic Heritage Park, Castlefield is an excellent place to visit to begin exploring Manchester. Time well spent is a walk among the hypercritically restored puritanical houses along the old conduits or through the repaired Roman Fort.

Be sure to explore the Bridgewater Canal. It was constructed in 1761 to transport coal from the mines at Worsley to Manchester. The numerous old storages that line the conduit have been restored and turned into services, shops, hospices, and cafes. A trip on one of the Bridgewater stint boats is primarily recommended.

Other intriguing sightseer lodestones include the Castlefield Art Gallery, its contemporary art exhibitions, and Bridgewater Hall, home to the Halle Orchestra and first-class musicales. The Castlefield Bowl hosts regular pop and classical musicals and is worth visiting.
Location Castlefield, Manchester

Imperial War Museum

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The gallery also offers deeper perceptivity into the main conflicts that arose in the 20th century and did so using several different types of shows and displays, along with regular wireworks of multitudinous short flicks.

Amongst the five branches of the Imperial War Galleries, which are the leading galleries of war in the whole world, this branch also takes callers on a trip to demonstrate people’s gest and mourning due to the conflicts in the different fields of life.

One of the most popular places to go in Manchester amongst history suckers, the Imperial War Museum North is also a great place to learn how wars have helped and contributed to civilization. You can find many static displays of large machines in the gallery, from tanks and aircraft to ordnance, handheld munitions, and more.

Location: Trafford Wharf Rd, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 1TZ, United Kingdom
Timings 10:00a.m. to 05:00p.m.

Know More: Things To Do In Leeds City Centre

Highlights

• In the IMW North, you can also take a walk through the country’s history, and the world, from WWI to the present day, and see the vast collection of more than 2000 objects related to significant historical events.

• One of the major highlights of the gallery also includes the field gun from the First World War, which was used to fire the British opening round on the Western Front

• You can also see a crooked steelwork ridden by rust, which was recaptured from the debris of the World Trade Center in New York after the binary palace9/11 attacks.

The Whitworth

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The Whitworth is one of the best places to visit in Manchester. Fresh from a major redevelopment, The Whitworth art gallery features over 000 artworks in its vast collection. Named after the girding demesne, the gallery’s veritably ultramodern installations are housed in a blend of old and new structures overlooking a veritably generous green space.

The oldest collections date back to 1889, and its heavenly collections of puppets and substantially ultramodern artworks have seen it constantly ranking in lists of top lodestones in Manchester. Other notable groups include watercolors, fabrics, and, indeed, wallpapers.

Workshops by the likes of Francis Bacon, Van Gogh, and Picasso can all be enjoyed, along with a sizable collection of out-of-door art. A café and shop are located on the demesne, and various delightful events and conditioning for individuals and families are available.

Address: Oxford Road, Manchester

Official site: www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk

Manchester Art Gallery

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Manchester Art Gallery was a finalist in the 2010 Guardian Family Friendly Museum of the Year award. That is because they’ve lots to offer families, including the new Clore Art Studio, free family-friendly coffers and installations, and a cafe offering children’s reflections. Whether you have half an hour or the whole day, this is a great place to take the kiddies, and it’s free to visit!

There are three bottoms and 21 apartments full of art and design to explore, and you do not have to like everything inside or be an expert to enjoy your visit. Discover works of art by great artists, from the luxurious colors of the Pre Raphaelites t the romantic art of Turner. There’s also a spectacular craft and design collection housed in a restored puritanical theatre.

Explorer Tool Belts are available to help family groups with children progressed 3 to 6 times, with an abundance of tools to help you make the utmost of your visit, like spot cards, binoculars, magnifying spectacles, and more. Story Bags are also available and contain a story to read, conditioning to do, and a mask to sit on.

There are 4 to choose from, and they’re suitable for families with kiddies progressed between 2 and 6 times. The top-bottom has a Handling Trail to try, where you can feel objects made from various accouterments, similar to wood, glass, ceramic, and essence, that have been created especially for touching.

The gallery has a different changing program, plus a wide range of shops, tenures, and other conditioning throughout the time, the utmost of which are free.

The Peoples History Museum

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Bless your little bone’s cotton socks and bring your family to The People’s History Museum. Come and learn about the significance of Manchester’s cotton trade during the Industrial Revolution.
Discover 19th- century secret societies that graced the alleyways and hidden recesses and cracks of Manchester.

At this gallery, your family can uncover over 1500 objects on exhibition and hear about the stories behind each one. There are also interactive stations to help aid in the literacy process. One of the most popular is the ‘Letters in a Box’ station.

At this station, you can engage with hundred-time-old objects representing an existent’s life, which is great for kinesthetic learners, as you can learn about a period through play and commerce. Bring your family to this gallery and learn about Manchester’s fascinating but peculiar history.

• Interactive stations
• Uncover Manchester’s history
• Discover 19th- century secret societies

Opening hours

Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 17:00
Second Thursday of Month 10:00 – 20:00
Closed 24th – 26th December & 1st January

Chetham’s Library

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Chetham’s Library is one of the best places to visit in Manchester. Chetham’s Hospital, just north of Manchester Cathedral, dates partly to 1422. Firstly a hearthstone for preachers, it’s now home to a music academy and Chetham Library, the oldest public library in England.

In continuous use since 1653, the library has more than 000 books, more than half published before 1850. During Marx’s visit to Manchester, Chetham is also notorious as the meeting place of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Guided tenures are available.

Other libraries of note are the Manchester Central Library, coming door to the Town Hall, and the Portico Library, which houses the erudite collection of Dalton and Joule, authors of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

The puritanical John Rylands Library, now part of Manchester University, is also worth seeing for its numerous special collections, including medieval textbooks, a Gutenberg Bible, and a group of early printing by William Caxton.

Location: Long Millgate, Manchester

Official site: www.chethams.org.uk

Manchester Cathedral

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York Minster may get all the attention to Northern- megacity churches. Yet, the late-Gothic Manchester Cathedral put away behind the primary shopping quarter is ideal for those seeking a moment of calm.

The Cathedral’s polychromatic stained-glass windows are its main magnet. The original puritanical windows were damaged during the Blitz, so what you’ll see dates from the 1960s or latterly. Look out for the honey-colored Fire Window, a pictorial memorial of the damage it suffered during WWII.

There’s also the rainbow-hued Healing Window, installed to commemorate the restoration of the structure after an IRA bombing in 1996. The ethereal structure regularly hosts musical musicales – from classical groups to indie-folk bands – although you’ll have to pay for entry.

Heaton Park

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Heaton Park is one of the best places to visit in Manchester. Covering some 600 acres, Heaton Park is the biggest demesne in Greater Manchester and one of the most significant external premises in Europe. Heaton Hall, erected in 1772, lies in the heart of the demesne.

Although not all of it’s open to the public, it remains an emotional sight( some structures, similar to the fascinating Orangery, are available seasonally to the public).

The demesne has been considerably restored and retains numerous of its original structures and lookouts. Sports suckers will enjoy its 18- hole golf course, driving range, mini putt, and tennis courts.

At the same time, families can explore the voyaging lake, beast ranch, woods, cosmetic auditoriums, overlook, and adventure playground. There is indeed a levy-run tramway and gallery.

Conclusion

All destinations are awesome! According to my opinion, Heaton Park is the best to start. I hope you have enjoyed our list of Best Places to Visit in Manchester.

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Henry
Henry

Hi! I'm Henry. I'm a best-selling travel writer who has been teaching people how to travel on a budget for sixteen years. 

And I'm here to help you spend less on your next trip.

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