Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery
Explore the
Museum Galleries
From Jurassic seas and Ice Age giants to Napoleonic prisoners, Victorian surgery and the making of the modern city. Nine galleries reveal 165 million years of Peterborough beneath one Georgian roof.
Nine galleries
One extraordinary Peterborough story
Begin beneath a Jurassic sea.
Peterborough Museum is not simply a collection of objects. It is a journey through the making of a place.
Beneath modern Peterborough lies Oxford Clay deposited when this part of England was covered by a warm Jurassic sea. Above it sit the traces of Ice Age animals, prehistoric communities, Roman settlement, medieval life, Napoleonic conflict, Victorian medicine and the rapid transformation of the modern city.
The galleries bring those layers together inside a Georgian mansion on Priestgate, allowing you to move through millions of years in the space of an afternoon.
Deep time beneath Peterborough
Peterborough's story begins long before there was a city.
Before there were streets, cathedrals or even humans here, Peterborough lay beneath a warm Jurassic sea inhabited by giant marine reptiles. The fossils preserved in the local Oxford Clay are among the city's most extraordinary stories and the first chapter in a history stretching across 165 million years.
Deep time
Before Peterborough had a name
Oceans. Ice. The first people.
The opening galleries stretch the idea of Peterborough backwards across geological time, from marine reptiles to mammoths and finally to the people who began leaving tools, possessions and settlements in the landscape.
01
Jurassic Gallery
Enter the sea that once covered Peterborough and encounter ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and immense marine predators preserved in the Oxford Clay beneath the modern city.
Discover Jurassic Peterborough →
02
Ice Age Gallery
Follow Peterborough through enormous climatic swings, when elephants and hippopotami could be replaced by mammoths and woolly rhinoceros as the landscape repeatedly froze and thawed.
Find the Ice Age on the timeline →
03
Archaeology Gallery
Hundreds of objects excavated around Peterborough trace how people adapted to wetlands, rivers and changing technology, from prehistoric communities through Roman and medieval life.
Explore Peterborough's archaeology →
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From museum to landscape
Museum archaeology becomes even more powerful when you then visit places such as Flag Fen, where Bronze Age remains survive within the wetland landscape in which they were created.
Discover Flag Fen →Conflict, captivity & medicine
Extraordinary stories from ordinary materials
Bone ships. Victorian surgery.
Two of the museum's most memorable spaces reveal Peterborough's relationship with national and international history, from prisoners caught up in the Napoleonic Wars to the building's own former life as an infirmary.
04
Norman Cross Gallery
French prisoners held at the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war depot transformed bone, wood and straw into intricate model ships, automata and marquetry of astonishing delicacy.
Discover Norman Cross →
05
Victorian Operating Theatre
Step into one of Britain's surviving historic operating theatres and confront the realities of surgery, medicine and hospital life when the museum building served as Peterborough's infirmary.
Find it in Weird Weekends →The museum is only the beginning
See the object. Then find the place.
The museum becomes even more powerful when its collections are connected back to Peterborough itself. Fossils connect to the clay beneath the city, archaeology to Flag Fen and Roman Durobrivae, prisoner craft to Norman Cross, and industrial objects to the railways, engineering works and brickfields that transformed modern Peterborough.
The city takes shape
Railways, industry, communities and nature
From market town to modern Peterborough.
The later galleries bring the story closer to the streets outside, exploring the rapid changes that reshaped Peterborough and the wildlife that continues to thrive around an expanding city.
06
Changing Lives Gallery
Follow three centuries of upheaval as railways, industry, war, migration and prosperity transform Peterborough from a small market town into the diverse city we recognise today.
Continue through the timeline →
07
Wildlife Gallery
Discover habitats ranging from fen and wetland to woodland, grassland and urban gardens, and the surprising variety of species living around modern Peterborough.
Explore Peterborough outdoors →Art & community
The museum story is never finished
Historic collections. Living creativity.
The final spaces bring the museum into the present, with changing exhibitions, visual art and community-led projects continually adding new voices to Peterborough's story.
Art Gallery
Three ground-floor gallery spaces host a changing programme of exhibitions, bringing historic collections together with contemporary artists and touring shows.
Explore Peterborough art →
Community Gallery
Community-curated projects and changing exhibitions create space for contemporary Peterborough to speak for itself, ensuring the museum's 165-million-year story remains open-ended.
See current exhibitions ↗Continue the story
The galleries are one doorway into Peterborough's past
Nine galleries. Millions more stories.
Discover Peterborough's history pages connect the museum collections to the real places, landscapes, industries and people behind them. Follow the story chronologically, investigate a particular period or jump into one of the themes that has shaped the city.
Peterborough History Hub
The gateway to Peterborough's story, from Jurassic seas and prehistoric wetlands to railways, engineering and the New Town.
Explore the History Hub →Interactive History Timeline
Move through Peterborough's history in chronological order and see how each era connects to the next.
Open the timeline →Roman Peterborough
Discover Durobrivae, Roman roads, pottery industries and the settlement that developed beside the River Nene.
Explore →Railway History
See how the arrival of the railway transformed Peterborough into a major transport, engineering and industrial centre.
Explore →Peterborough Brick Industry
Discover the clay, companies and vast brickworks that made Peterborough one of the world's great brick-producing centres.
Explore →Peterborough New Town
Follow the extraordinary post-war expansion that reshaped Peterborough, its neighbourhoods and its identity.
Explore →Plan your museum visit
Priestgate · Peterborough city centre
Nine galleries. One afternoon.
Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery sits in the heart of the historic city, a short walk from Cathedral Square.
General admission is free, making the museum an easy part of a wider city-centre day combining the Cathedral, shopping, food, public art and the historic streets around Priestgate.