The York Dungeon

About this place

Nothing in the York Dungeon is genuine, and yet you walk out knowing more of York's history than some of the city's earnest museums manage to teach. The format is simple: a small group is led through ten dark, sequential rooms, and in each a live actor performs a scene of a few minutes from two thousand years of the city's nastier past - Roman Eboracum, the vengeance of the Vikings, a plague house, a torture chamber, the York witch Isabella Billington, and the highwayman Dick Turpin, hanged here in 1739, with York-born Guy Fawkes getting his mention. The whole thing runs about 75 minutes. It is run by Merlin, the same group behind the London Dungeon and Legoland, which explains everything: this is polished theatrical entertainment, not a museum. The sets are deliberately pitch dark, the sound is loud, there are intentional foul smells, water sprays, air blasts and strobe lighting, and the actors pull members of the group into scenes without much warning. Adults and teenagers usually come out laughing; children under eight quite often come out in tears. Under-fives are not admitted at all, the official recommendation is eight and over, and ours is ten. You can tell staff at the entrance that you would rather not be picked; they give you a yellow sticker and the actors leave you alone. Price is the deciding factor. Booked online, adult tickets start at £19 with a timed slot; at the door it is £25, so a family of four saves over twenty pounds simply by booking on a phone an hour ahead. In July, August and around Halloween slots sell out, so do not count on walking straight in. Hours shift with the season - doors usually open at 10:00 or 10:30, in the colder months it closes around 16:00, a little later in summer - so check the site before your day. There are two internal flights of stairs, both with stair lifts, and pushchairs are allowed, though the thought of a baby in this darkness and shrieking is not a comfortable one. Is it worth it? If you have children aged ten to fifteen who are bored of churches and museums, this is the best 75 minutes you will buy in York, and its spot on Clifford Street - two minutes' walk from Clifford's Tower and about fifteen from the railway station - makes it easy to slot into a city day. If you want the real history of York, the Yorkshire Museum and the Jorvik Viking Centre are more honest and cheaper, and nothing stops you doing both.