Bolton Museum, Art museum and aquarium in Bolton, England
Bolton Museum is a local authority museum and archive in the center of Bolton, England, holding collections that cover art, natural history, archaeology and local heritage. The building spans several floors, each dedicated to a different area of the collection.
The museum was founded in 1852 after the town adopted legislation allowing the creation of public libraries and museums. Over the following decades, its collection grew through donations and finds from archaeological digs across the region.
The museum brings together local art, natural history and everyday objects in a way that reflects how people in Bolton have lived over the generations. Walking through the rooms, visitors get a direct sense of the region's working and social life.
The museum is in Bolton town center and easy to reach on foot from the train station. It is worth setting aside a good few hours, as the collection covers several floors and a wide range of subjects.
The museum is home to one of the oldest public aquariums in Britain, which first opened in 1941 and became open to the general public in 1947 after the war. Few local museums of this kind have kept a living exhibit like this running for so long.
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