Portsmouth City Museum

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Portsmouth City Museum

The City Museum is the museum of and for the people of Portsmouth. There are temporary exhibition galleries, which have a frequently changing parade of fascinating shows on a wide range of subjects - recent exhibitions have included Space Exploration, Portsmouth at the time Nelson and Eco Fashion. 

On Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 January, the City Museum will open at 12pm (we are closed during the morning due to staff training). The City Museum café will be open from the usual time of 10am however.

To see what's on at present please click on Events and Exhibitions.

The museum's main displays feature the 'Story of Portsmouth'.  Discover how life at home has changed over the centuries in the 'Living in Portsmouth' Gallery which looks at life in the home with the reconstruction of a 17th century bedchamber, an 1871 dockyard worker's kitchen, a Victorian parlour, a 1930s kitchen and a 1950s living room. The story continues with 'Portsmouth at Play' on the beach, in the cinema, on the football field and dance floor.

'A Study in Sherlock: Uncovering The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection'

This new and exciting, interactive and permanent exhibition of Richard Lancelyn Green’s international Collection has been created in its own refurbished gallery.

The new display explores further the life of Arthur Conan Doyle and the creation of Sherlock Holmes. It also features a range of interactive displays, a ‘new’ Sherlock Holmes mystery, and narration by Stephen Fry, the Patron of the Collection. Come and experience the world of Sherlock Holmes and fine-tune your own powers of detection!

Click here to find more about this fabulous collection

Fine and Decorative Art

There is also a Fine and Decorative Art Gallery, which features a wide range of material from the 17th century to the present day; the Portsmouth Picture Gallery with its extensive and important collection of local paintings, prints and drawings, and the Temporary Exhibition Gallery where a regularly changing programme ensures that there is always something to see or do.

General Enquiries and Donations

The staff at Portsmouth Museums and Records Service are willing to answer enquiries you may have about the collections of archives and objects that we hold or any questions you might have concerning Portsmouth's history. Please see our Enquiries page for more details of the enquiries that we can answer. If you have an object you would like to know more about click here for more information about how to get in touch.

The collections we hold and museums we open are only made possible by the generosity of the public.  If you would like to make a donation of an object or papers please click here.

Click here to find out more about recent acquisitions to the collections of Portsmouth Museums & Records Service.

Click here to find out more about Portsmouth Museums & Records Society, our 'Friends' organisation which supports the work of our museums.

All pictures are copyright of Portsmouth Museums and Records Service