UK’s top 50 most fun educational visitor attractions

Looking for a list of UK visitor attractions? Want to know what the best days out near you are? If you’re looking for a ‘fun’ and educational day out in the United Kingdom over the summer months, the latest research by Saturn Visual Solutions now shows you the 50 best visitor attractions to head to.

Who is this list for

Our list of educational but fun days out was picked by adults, so it’s perfect for ideas for couples days out, for days out with teenagers, and for ideas for family days out. Many of the attractions are indoors so they’re ideal for things to do on rainy days. Many of the visitor attractions are also free to enter or have a low entry fee so they’re also good for cheap days out.

How this list was created

According to various scientific research papers, the human brain is more receptive to learning when having fun. Accordingly, we carried out a survey to find out which of the UK’s educational visitor attractions was the most ‘fun’ and therefore the best at helping people learn and remember scientific or historical information.

The research was carried out in 2024 by OnePoll and commissioned by us, Saturn Visual Solutions. We’re a digital signage consultancy that specialises in using digital displays to help all kinds of leisure businesses and educational charities to make their ‘visitor experience’ more engaging and fun.

Who’s in the list

Our research asked 2,000 UK-based, adult full-time and part-time workers were asked what the most ‘fun’ educational leisure attraction they’d visited in the UK was.

The results have been used to create a definitive list of the UK’s top 50 most ‘fun’ educational visitor attractions which is made up of museums, art galleries, historic sites, and environmental attractions.

The rankings are based on the number of people that named the site as a ‘fun’ attraction, rather than metrics like visitor numbers which tend to discount many smaller and more remote educational visitor attractions.

UK’s Top 50 Most ‘Fun’ Educational Visitor Attractions

Ranking Visitor attraction
1. Natural History Museum, London
2. The British Museum, London
3. Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh
4. Eden Project, Cornwall
5. Roman Baths, Bath
6. Warwick Castle, Warwick
7. National Railway Museum, York
8. Tate Modern, London
9. Titanic Belfast, Belfast
10. Stonehenge, Wiltshire
11. Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester
12. National Space Centre, Leicestershire
13. Imperial War Museum North, Salford
14. Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds
15. Maritime Museum, Liverpool
16. Black Country Living Museum, Dudley
17. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
18. Eureka! The National Children’s Museum, Halifax
19. Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Hampshire
20. National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff
21. Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum, Birmingham
22. Caernarfon Castle, Caernarfon
23. Jodrell Bank, Cheshire
24. Riverside Museum, Glasgow
25. Aerospace Bristol, Bristol
26. RAF Museum, Shropshire
27. Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast
28. Big Pit National Coal Museum, Monmouthshire
29. Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow
30. Ulster Museum, Belfast
31. Coventry Transport Museum, Coventry
32. Beamish, County Durham
33. Science Museum, London
34. York Minster, York
35. JORVIK Viking Centre, York
36. Imperial War Museum, London
37. Longleat, Wiltshire
38. Baltic Gallery, Gateshead
39. Blists Hill Victorian Town, Telford
40. National Maritime Museum, Cornwall
41. Glasgow Science Centre, Glasgow
42. National Football Museum, Manchester
43. Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool
44. The Tank Museum, Bovington
45. World Museum, Liverpool
46. Mount Edgcumbe, Torpoint
47. Chatsworth House, Bakewell
48. Hat Works Museum, Stockport
49. Danum, Doncaster
50. Churchill War Rooms, London

About the top five ranked educational visitor attractions in the UK

• The Natural History Museum in London was found to be the best day out, coming top of the rankings with nearly one in five adults (19%) saying it was the most fun UK educational leisure attraction they’d been to. The museum, which is free of charge to enter, has impressive meteorite and dinosaur collections and has an animatronic T-Rex and mixed reality palaeontology experiences. It was by far the most popular attraction across all age groups, and with both women (21%) and men (16%).
• The second most popular educational visitor attraction and another free day out was the British Museum which secured 14 per cent of the votes. Also situated in London, it has 50 galleries of artefacts from across a time period of two million years.
• Edinburgh Castle was the highest ranked visitor attraction outside of London, taking third place in the list with 10.9 per cent of respondents voting for it. It comprises a royal palace, war and military museums, and an immersive exhibition showcasing the Castle’s role in the Wars of Independence.
• Eden Project in Cornwall got 10.5 per cent of the votes to take fourth place. The eco visitor attraction and educational charity features biomes that recreate different eco-systems, including a rainforest with rope bridges over the canopy of vegetation. It also has a scientific exhibition with interactive exhibits and hands-on experiments.
• The fifth most ‘fun’ educational visitor attraction was the Roman Baths in Bath. The historic site, which enables people to walk among and touch roman relics, (including drinking water from the spa) features architectural reconstructions via projectors, and 3D computer animations to bring the site’s history to life.

Why we created this list

Our CEO, Chris Welsh, said: “Every year there are tables of data about ‘great days out’ and which visitor attractions are the most popular, but something that’s often overlooked is how much ‘fun’ they are. Both adults and children are more likely to learn and remember information if it’s part of a ‘fun’ experience, so we thought that it was important to find out which educational visitor attractions were most successful in making learning fun.

“Our research found that nearly half of adults categorise something as being boring if it doesn’t have engaging activities. So, it’s no major surprise that so many of the highest-ranking educational visitor attractions in our research have interactive exhibits and experiences on offer.”

 In addition to the UK’s top 50 most fun educational leisure attractions list, the research has also used the research to produce a white paper called ‘The very serious business of having fun at museums’ which can be found here.

Infographic: Click the link here for an infographic map of of the top ten educational visitor attractions in the list.