The Northampton Museum and Art Gallery is a great place to learn more about local history and see a range of visiting exhibitions. It’s located in the town centre on Guildhall Road, close to the bus station and a short walk from the train station. If you choose to drive, there are plenty of car parks nearby. The entire building is fully accessible and has lifts to all floors.
The museum covers a range of history including shoes, archaeology, ethnography, geology, social history, coins and medals and military history. There are also a number of temporary visiting exhibitions. The permanent collection is deemed as being of national and international significance, and the shoe collection is particularly noteworthy. It consists of 12,000 shoes, spanning from ancient Egyptian times through to the present day.
The art gallery showcases collections of fine art and decorative art. There are around 3,000 paintings in the fine art gallery. The main bulk of the collection consists of British easel paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, whilst there are also some important Italian paintings dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The decorative art collection contains rare items given to the museum by private collectors. There are ceramics, glassware, metalware and furniture.
The museum building also has a café area known as The Shoe Lounge. This is available for private hire as well as being open to museum visitors, and it features work by contemporary shoe designers and manufacturers.