The fin whale
A 21-metre skeleton suspended in the glass hall, visible from the street before you even go in.
Magnus Manske — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Emőke Dénes — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Emőke Dénes — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Emőke Dénes — CC BY-SA 4.0
A fin whale skeleton more than 21 metres long hangs over your head before you have taken a single step inside. That is the opening act, and it costs nothing: the glass Whale Hall of the David Attenborough Building faces straight onto the street, and the whale the staff call 'Bobby', washed up at Pevensey Bay in Sussex in 1865, was taken apart and cleaned bone by bone when the museum had its roughly four-million-pound refit and reopened in summer 2018. Inside, two floors wrap around the hall: the upper gallery, at entrance level, runs through the animal kingdom from fish and reptiles to birds, insects, shells and corals, and the lower gallery is the mammal floor with the big skeletons, from an Asian elephant to a racehorse. The piece to stop for is the giant ground sloth, about as tall as a giraffe and said to be one of only two genuine specimens in all of Europe; upstairs stands the skeleton of the extinct dodo from Mauritius, one of the most complete in Britain, and downstairs the skeleton of a thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger. In quieter corners are beetles thought to have been collected by Charles Darwin as a student here in Cambridge, birds from the Beagle voyage, and specimens from Alfred Russel Wallace, his partner in the idea of natural selection. Do not expect a stern university institution: the labels are short and clear, the lighting is modern, and much of the collection sits low enough for a child to see. Entry is free and needs no booking except for groups of ten or more, and an hour to ninety minutes covers it. It suits families unusually well: a lift between the two floors, a ramp for pushchairs, folding stools to borrow from reception, lockers for bags, and a small cafe under the whale open until 15:00 from Tuesday to Saturday. The hours are on the tight side: Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 16:30, Sunday from noon only, closed Mondays except bank holidays, with last entry a quarter of an hour before closing, so do not make it the final stop of a short winter day. It sits in the heart of town, five minutes on foot from the Fitzwilliam Museum, and directly across Downing Street from the Sedgwick geology museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, all free too, so two or three can be strung together on one wet morning. From the railway station it is about a 25-minute walk or a short bus ride; drivers have the Grand Arcade car park a few minutes away. Cambridge Central Mosque on Mill Road is around twenty minutes' walk if you want to pray before heading back.
A 21-metre skeleton suspended in the glass hall, visible from the street before you even go in.
An extinct beast as tall as a giraffe, said to be one of only two real specimens in Europe.
Beetles thought to date from Darwin's student days in Cambridge, and birds from the Beagle voyage.
Downing Street, David Attenborough Building, Cambridge CB2 3EJ
Museum of Archaeology and AnthropologyA fourteen-metre cedar totem pole, carved by the Haida people of Haida Gwaii off1 minute walk4.6
Sedgwick Museum of Earth SciencesAt the top of a grand double stone staircase, guarded by carved bears on one sid2 minutes walk4.8
Corpus ClockA clock that cost a million pounds, has no hands, and is deliberately correct on3 minutes walk4.7
Cambridge Market SquarePeople have been buying and selling on this patch of ground since Saxon times, c3 minutes walk4.4
Great St Mary's ChurchThe tune the whole world knows as the Big Ben chimes was written for this tower,3 minutes walk4.7With children under ten, pick this one first: huge skeletons and mounted animals hold them far better than paintings, it is free, there is a lift and pushchairs go in easily. The Fitzwilliam is the finer museum for adults, and the two are five minutes apart, so both fit into one morning if time allows.
An hour is enough, ninety minutes with children who stop at every skeleton. Hours are the same all year: closing is 16:30 with last entry at 16:15, Sunday opens only from noon, and Monday is closed, so make it a morning stop rather than the end of the day.