One of Oxford's best museums has had its biggest ever transformation

Many of Oxford’s greatest treasures are locked away behind closed doors: cloistered in colleges guarded by bowler hat-wearing porters. Still, this learned city also has the distinction of having the UK’s first ever natural history museum, constructed in 1860 to house a spectacular collection of dinosaur skeletons and other intriguing specimens.

Now, those ancient bones are part of a shiny new display designed to introduce them to a new generation of visitors. The Oxford University Museum of Natural History has just finished the final phase of eight-year-long internal revamp, which redisplays more than 3,000 objects in 24 state-of-the-art themed showcases. This project is the biggest redisplay in the museum’s history, designed to boost interactivity and storytelling, and showcase key exhibits in visually exciting style.

Some of the biggest highlights of the collection are the dinosaurs: fascinating finds that introduced the Victorians to the terrifying notion that giant scaly beasts once roamed the earth, long before humans were thought of. When the nine-metre long megalosaurus was first unearthed in a limestone quarry in Oxfordshire and presented to the Geological Society of London in 1824, it caused an outcry – and kickstarted the study of what would eventually become known as dinosaurs. The displays will also house two other local dinos: the carnivorous eustreptospondylus, found in the affluent Oxford suburb of Summertown in 1870, and cumnoria, found in the otherwise sleepy village of Cumnor in 1879.

Tired of dinos? The museum’s packed display has plenty of other intriguing exhibits. ‘Mirror Moon’ is a sculpture by artist Luke Jerram that’s a glittering reconstruction of the moon’s surface based on NASA data, made of polished steel, that’ll allow visitors to feel every crater and valley. There’s more interactivity on offer with Prehistoric Diver, which lets visitors steer a submarine through a virtual reimagining of the oceans in the Jurassic and Cambrian periods. And there are also insights into how new research is conducted at Oxford University, with displays about studies into local ecology.

The building itself is pretty special, too: like London’s Natural History Museum, it’s an airy exercise in red brick Victorian gothic, with towering columns and pointed arches making it feel like a secular cathedral to scientific learning. Its big transformation has been funded by Biffa Award’s Landfill Communities Fund, which supports community projects near landfill sites. Take a visit to this free museum and you really will see how trash turned to treasure.

Find more marvellous museums with our list of the UK’s top 20.

Plus: read why OUMNH is one of Time Out’s favourite museums in Oxford.

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