The hull with no glass
You stand before the real half-ship across three decks, and from the upper-deck gallery nothing has separated you from the timber since the 2016 refit.
Half a warship lay on the seabed for 437 years, then came up in a single day in October 1982 while the world watched on television: that is what this building was wrapped around. The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's favourite ship, and she sank in the Solent in 1545 with the king himself watching from Southsea Castle on the shore. The silt that swallowed her starboard side is the same silt that preserved it, along with everything inside: longbows, wooden combs, the cook's dishes, musical instruments and the bones of some 180 of her crew. The present museum opened in 2013 and was reworked in 2016 so that the old glass wall between visitor and hull came down: from the upper-deck gallery you look straight at the timber with nothing in between, and the galleries run on three levels that mirror the ship's own decks. Opposite, at the same height, sit the objects recovered from each deck, so you look at the timber on one side and at what it once carried on the other. The light is deliberately low and the air carefully controlled; treat that as part of the experience rather than a fault. The skeletons and the facial reconstructions of individual sailors are what silence children over ten, and may be too much for very small ones. There is no stand-alone ticket. You enter on a Historic Dockyard ticket: a one-attraction day ticket at £36 for an adult and £26 for a child, or the Ultimate Experience annual ticket at £51 per adult, with family tickets between £99 and £120 covering up to three children. The extra £15 buys you HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, the other museums, the Gosport waterbus and a full year's validity, so the single ticket only makes sense if you genuinely have two hours and no more. Book online ahead in the summer school holidays, when queues build at the gate and inside the museum itself. Portsmouth Harbour station is about five minutes on foot from Victory Gate; drivers come straight off the M275 and use the paid dockyard car parks. The museum is level and lift-served, so pushchairs and wheelchairs are fine, and because it is entirely indoors it is one of the best things to do in Portsmouth on a wet day. In winter the doors close at five with last entry at four, and the only closures are 24 to 26 December, so come in the morning and allow an hour and a half to two hours.
You stand before the real half-ship across three decks, and from the upper-deck gallery nothing has separated you from the timber since the 2016 refit.
Some 19,000 objects lifted from the silt, from longbows and combs to the cook's dishes, shown opposite the deck they came from.
Scientific reconstructions of individual sailors from their skulls, each with his story; the most affecting room in the museum.
Victory Gate, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth PO1 3LJ
The Ultimate, almost always. The extra £15 adds HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, the other museums, the Gosport waterbus and a year's validity, and a family with two or three children saves more again on the £99 or £120 ticket. The single ticket only suits someone passing through Portsmouth with two hours to spare.
From about eight or ten upwards, very much so. Under-sixes may find it dark, quiet and full of human bones, and lose interest after half an hour; climbing the decks of HMS Victory next door pleases them far more, so start there if they are with you.