North Yorkshire + Tees Valley

North Yorkshire and the Tees Valley boast a fabulous collective of museums and galleries which truly reflect the region's rich history and heritage.

The City of York is home to the Yorkshire Museum which offers displays of Roman, Viking, and medieval artefacts, and also the Jorvik Viking Centre brings the city's Norse past to life through immersive, interactive experiences. York Art Gallery houses an impressive collection of paintings, ceramics, and contemporary pieces.

The Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate features changing exhibitions of fine art, while the Royal Pump Room Museum explores the spa town's Victorian heyday. For an insight into rural life in the Yorkshire Dales, The Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes is one place to consider visiting, as is the award-winning World of James Herriot in Thirsk; the original home of All Creatures Great & Small, now dedicated to the life and work of James Alfred Wight, better known by his pen name, James Herriot, and his semi-autobiographical books chronicling his experiences as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales

You can find out about another of the region's famous sons at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby which charts the life of the famed explorer in the house where he once lodged. Further north into the Tees Valley, Middlesbrough's Dorman Museum also has an exhibition about him, in addition to a showcase on natural sciences, local history, and decorative arts. The town's MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) is another key attraction for the region, famed for its thought-provoking contemporary exhibitions and community engagement.

With 2025 being the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR), explore the story of Darlington's pioneering progression of rail transport in the early 19th century in a museum housed in a Grade II* listed Victorian station. Previously known as Head of Steam, Hopetown Darlington is a railway museum located on the 1825 route of the S&DR, the world's first steam-powered passenger railway, and features locomotives, historic carriages and exhibits on George Stephenson and railway innovation.