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Newcastle Overview

Northern Charm

Forget about coal mining, today’s Newcastle is a hip urban centre filled with plenty of intriguing art galleries, fine restaurants and an amazing array of great bars. Take advantage of the great shopping and make sure you visit the city’s famous bridges over the Tyne. But it is the people that make the city great, for Geordies are renowned for their warmth and sense of fun.

The Discovery Museum is unquestionably the most diverse museum complex in Newcastle, indeed in all of northern England. In fact, the museum houses galleries that focus on such themes as the city's social and maritime history, that of the River Tyne, football (soccer), World War II and Newcastle in the 1960s. Another one of the museum's great features is the People's Gallery, where community groups as well as individuals can mount their own exhibitions. Docked at the entrance to the museum, the stately Turbinia, a superb ship that recalls the riverside city's glory days, has been restored to its former splendour and offers hands-on exhibits.

The prestigious Laing Art Gallery displays very interesting collections of watercolours, costumes, sculptures, glassware, pottery and paintings, the latter including works by Paul Gauguin, William Holman Hunt, Burne Jones and John Martin. Temporary contemporary art exhibitions are regularly held here as well.

Natural history and ecology are themes favoured by the Hancock Museum, whose "Our Home the Earth," "The Living Planet" and "Earthworks" exhibitions enlighten young and old alike about current problems facing the environment as well as our beleaguered planet's geological history. The Museum of Antiquities, for its part, has an archaeological vocation, with an outstanding collection of finds from the Roman era -- more specifically, objects uncovered during the excavation of Hadrian's Wall. In addition to galleries devoted to the stone and bronze ages, the museum features a magnificent sculpture depicting the birth of Mithra (a Persian god, later adopted by the Roman Empire). Soldiers of the Roman Legions secretly worshipped Mithra, portrayed as a young man often clad in Phrygian dress and headgear.