Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens

A museum, art gallery, exhibition space and Winter Gardens combine to create a stunning visitor attraction.

Situated in the heart of the city centre, Sunderland Museum, Library and Winter Gardens has a collection dating back to 1846 and there are plenty of surprises to be found. Explore Sunderland’s colourful past within a day, no matter whether you’re looking for fun stuff to do with the kids, an afternoon of culture or the perfect day out for inquisitive minds.

The most famous attraction is undoubtedly Wallace The Lion. Wallace was part of a touring wild animal show during the 1800s with the then-famous African tamer Martini Maccomo. Wallace came into the Museum’s collection following Maccomo’s death 135 years ago and has remained there ever since as one of the most popular exhibits.

You’ll also find hundreds of other amazing items showcased at the museum such as the first Nissan car to roll off the production line at the Sunderland Nissan factory in 1986. Galleries at the Sunderland Museum also display pieces from the shipbuilding, glass and pottery making industries in Sunderland, as well as works from the Anglo-Saxon period and many other antiquities from the city’s past.

The Winter Gardens houses an excellent botanical collection of over 2,000 plants and trees, displayed to their full splendour in naturalistic settings under a single-span 30 metre dome. For the gardener or botanist there are many fine examples of the world’s most interesting and exotic plants, such as the primitive plants displayed around ‘Fern Gully’ which include Tree Ferns, Cycads, giant horsetails, and Michella figo, a relative of the Magnolias. Visitors can see growing examples of many important plants from around the world, such as tea, coffee, sugar, citrus fruits, date palms, bananas, pineapple, mango, the vanilla orchid and gingers, as well as a number of plants that are used to make important medicines.