It only took me 29 years.
Finally, in the company of my husband — now a fellow arms and armour enthusiast, though I didn’t know him when the place opened in 1996 — and with far more experience of continental collections than I had back then, I made it to see the our national collection of arms and armour.
If you’re only interested in glamorous examples from the great age of knights in shining armour, the museum can’t compare, artistically, to many collections on the continent. (Leeds didn’t come close to knocking Dresden’s Rüstkammer off the pedestal we’ve placed it on.) That’s no surprise: Italian and German workshops made the most beautiful pieces. English-made armour was more functional, with decorative imports bringing the bling. While there are a handful of noteworthy items, it’s probably not worth the trip from London if art history is your only interest.
The museum’s strengths lie elsewhere.
Museum management strikes an admirable balance between commercial savvy and government-mandated free admission, without being too obvious. The crossbow-firing experience (£8) was clearly popular, the cafés are plentiful, and the gift shop is impressive, with something for everyone. A large exhibition space currently features a copiously promoted pay-for-entry show on gladiators, though the permanent collections are so vast that we couldn't consider add-ons.
Practicalities are unusually convenient. Because the building sits in a newly redeveloped urban area, there’s a huge, spotless multi-storey car park just a short walk from the entrance. The motorway network glides you straight there. Getting to a major UK museum is rarely this easy.
All this combines to create one of the most child-friendly museums I’ve ever visited, while still offering plenty of depth for grown-ups who want a serious exploration.
We particularly liked the gallery on arms and armour in popular culture, showing how real-world history inspired weapons and style in the Star Wars and Bond franchises, and in countless medieval epics. (I reacted with childlike glee to Lancelot's armour from Excalibur.) There are thought-provoking displays on modern crime and policing, including some excellent myth-busting about the reality of weapons use in today’s UK. Elsewhere, an outstanding Agincourt gallery combines hundreds of tiny model soldiers with informative panels exploring the event and its main players in depth.
While the collection may be light on artistic masterpieces — the French 16th-century “Lion Armour” is probably the highlight — what it lacks in decorative firepower it makes up for in drama. Suits of armour stand in cases so beautifully made that the barriers almost disappear, many dramatically positioned against vast windows overlooking the docklands. Life-sized models bring the armour to life in battle scenes; the clash of foot soldiers and mounted knights at Pavia is particularly effective. Most striking of all, a vast tower reimagines the old tradition of decorating walls with weapons, supersized into a breathtaking piece of installation art.
One of the museum’s most spectacular objects is the full suit of elephant armour. Those of my generation will remember it as a highlight of the Tower of London. It’s one of the treasures that moved north, and it was a joy to see it again. It now crowns a gallery of African, Middle Eastern, and Asian arms and armour, with an especially fine samurai collection.
Like all our national collections, the Royal Armouries offer too vast a larder to consume in one go. Ideally, you’d pop in repeatedly, perhaps devoting an hour to the Indian Rebellions or the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Unless you live nearby, though, you’ll probably visit as we did: taking in as much as possible in one go. Three hours gave us time to cover most galleries, catch a couple of presentations, and get a sense of the place before our brains hit “full.”
Unlike the London museums, you’ll find fewer crowds and a less international audience. I worried when the website sternly warned me to pre-book the day before our visit. I’d missed the booking window. Had they booked out all the spaces, as the British Museum sometimes does? Hardly. Even in the peak of school holidays, there was space aplenty. No queues. We waltzed in and were immediately welcomed by helpful volunteers explaining how everything worked. In contrast to London, where foreign tourists dominate, the only non-British accents I heard were my own and that of the curator introducing the guns of the American West.
It did make me wonder how this experiment — moving a major cultural institution out of London — has fared, thirty years on. I loved the museum. It’s clearly anchored the regeneration of its neighbourhood. But I doubt it attracts anything like the numbers or revenues it would in the capital. I found articles about budget cuts and redundancies in recent years, but little to answer my broader question.
One thing is certain: the people of Leeds are blessed to have such a magnificent resource on their doorstep.
The museum’s strengths lie elsewhere.
Its scope is far broader than I expected, closer to a military history museum than a pure arms and armour collection. (The best comparison is the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden.) Being purpose-built and modern, the Royal Armouries lean heavily on technology: interactive games, video deep-dives, and historic reenactments. The building is big enough for dramatic displays and spacious enough to include performance areas, with at least three live shows daily. We caught Renaissance sword fighting and the guns of the Old West.
The swordsmen were particularly impressive, not just for their choreography but for their ability to explain fighting details that were new to us. Here, staff are both curators and performers.
The swordsmen were particularly impressive, not just for their choreography but for their ability to explain fighting details that were new to us. Here, staff are both curators and performers.
Practicalities are unusually convenient. Because the building sits in a newly redeveloped urban area, there’s a huge, spotless multi-storey car park just a short walk from the entrance. The motorway network glides you straight there. Getting to a major UK museum is rarely this easy.
All this combines to create one of the most child-friendly museums I’ve ever visited, while still offering plenty of depth for grown-ups who want a serious exploration.
We particularly liked the gallery on arms and armour in popular culture, showing how real-world history inspired weapons and style in the Star Wars and Bond franchises, and in countless medieval epics. (I reacted with childlike glee to Lancelot's armour from Excalibur.) There are thought-provoking displays on modern crime and policing, including some excellent myth-busting about the reality of weapons use in today’s UK. Elsewhere, an outstanding Agincourt gallery combines hundreds of tiny model soldiers with informative panels exploring the event and its main players in depth.
While the collection may be light on artistic masterpieces — the French 16th-century “Lion Armour” is probably the highlight — what it lacks in decorative firepower it makes up for in drama. Suits of armour stand in cases so beautifully made that the barriers almost disappear, many dramatically positioned against vast windows overlooking the docklands. Life-sized models bring the armour to life in battle scenes; the clash of foot soldiers and mounted knights at Pavia is particularly effective. Most striking of all, a vast tower reimagines the old tradition of decorating walls with weapons, supersized into a breathtaking piece of installation art.
One of the museum’s most spectacular objects is the full suit of elephant armour. Those of my generation will remember it as a highlight of the Tower of London. It’s one of the treasures that moved north, and it was a joy to see it again. It now crowns a gallery of African, Middle Eastern, and Asian arms and armour, with an especially fine samurai collection.
Like all our national collections, the Royal Armouries offer too vast a larder to consume in one go. Ideally, you’d pop in repeatedly, perhaps devoting an hour to the Indian Rebellions or the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Unless you live nearby, though, you’ll probably visit as we did: taking in as much as possible in one go. Three hours gave us time to cover most galleries, catch a couple of presentations, and get a sense of the place before our brains hit “full.”
Unlike the London museums, you’ll find fewer crowds and a less international audience. I worried when the website sternly warned me to pre-book the day before our visit. I’d missed the booking window. Had they booked out all the spaces, as the British Museum sometimes does? Hardly. Even in the peak of school holidays, there was space aplenty. No queues. We waltzed in and were immediately welcomed by helpful volunteers explaining how everything worked. In contrast to London, where foreign tourists dominate, the only non-British accents I heard were my own and that of the curator introducing the guns of the American West.
It did make me wonder how this experiment — moving a major cultural institution out of London — has fared, thirty years on. I loved the museum. It’s clearly anchored the regeneration of its neighbourhood. But I doubt it attracts anything like the numbers or revenues it would in the capital. I found articles about budget cuts and redundancies in recent years, but little to answer my broader question.
One thing is certain: the people of Leeds are blessed to have such a magnificent resource on their doorstep.
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