The Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery is undoubtedly one of the major Plymouth tourist attractions, one of the highlights in many visitors’ itinerary. The imposing museum features collections of natural history, human history and the fine and decorative arts. The natural history section of the museum contains more than 150,000 items as well as an archive and library. Meanwhile the human history collection features prehistoric artefacts from Dartmoor, significant Iron Age and Bronze Age relics from Mountbatten as well as post-medieval and medieval discoveries from Plymouth; also present is material from Ancient Egypt and the early civilizations of the Middle East and Europe.

The extensive Art Gallery features more than 3,000 drawings and water colour paintings, 750 easel paintings, a considerable assortment of sculptures and about 5,000 prints. Included in the collection are prized works by local artists, those of the Newlyn School of the 19th century, the prominent St. Ives Group of the 20th century as well as the Camden Town group.

The Plymouth: Port and Place Gallery exhibits an array of artefacts which portray the manner in which the city has developed over the years from an early settlement to the modern city that it now is. Several thematic sections are depicted including ‘Town to City’, ‘Safe Harbour’, ‘Plymouth Journeys’ and ‘Naval Port’. The displays reveal how the seas, the centuries of conflict and the military have combined to form Plymouth as it is today.

Other fascinating displays include ‘Bringing the World to Plymouth’ which relates how the valuable artefacts from around the world came to be housed at the museum; ‘The China Collection’ which tells the story of the development of porcelain; and the ‘Cottonian Collection’, which features the art compilation of Charles Rogers in the 18th century.
 
With all this on offer, no visitor to the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery will leave disappointed.