It’s all here at The World Museum with treasures from around the world, the bottom of the ocean and even outer space. A hybrid of old and new: outside, it’s all Corinthian columns and neo-Classical architecture. Inside, five floors of natural history exhibits including dinosaur displays, bugs and insects, a planetarium, aquarium and Ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian artefacts. This museum is unashamedly family focussed and as you might expect it is mobbed on weekends and school holidays.

Three years in the making at a cost of £72m, the Museum of Liverpool opened in 2011 and exists to tell the long and winding tale of Liverpool’s past. Which it does, in spades, thanks to 6,000 objects displayed on three floors, all connected by a shell-like, spiral staircase.

From an exploration as to why Liverpool was once declared “a wonder of the world” to the only surviving carriage of the world’s first electrified overhead railway, this museum gives visitors the chance to get under the skin of a city that was for 200 years one of the world’s most influential.

Liverpool has a long nautical history and the Merseyside Maritime Museum in the historic Royal Albert Dock is the perfect place to get a feel for the small inlet that grew to become the gateway to the world.

Designed in 1887 by architect Alfred Waterhouse to house the newly established University College, Liverpool, the building underwent an £8.6 million renovation when it was converted into a gallery and museum to mark Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008. Edwardian archaeology, contemporary photography and the world’s largest collection false teeth – the museum squeezes a lot in across two floors of exhibition space.

The International Slavery Museum opened on 23 August 2007, marking the date of the annual Slavery Remembrance Day and the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade. Not merely custodians of the past, this museum takes a stance campaigning for social justice on behalf of enslaved people around the world – and does a mighty fine job of it.

The British Music Experience charts the beginnings, rise and influence of British pop from 1945 to the present day. There are iconic costumes worn by David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Dusty Springfield, the Spice Girls and Adam Ant, and musical instruments played by some of the world’s most renowned artists from Noel Gallagher to the Sex Pistols.

Liverpool is synonymous with the Fab Four and the award-winning Beatles Story experience is an atmospheric journey into the life, times, culture and music of the biggest selling rock group in the world.

Part art exhibition, part time capsule, the home of the 1950s portrait photographer Edward Chambré Hardman is a monument to the magnificent portrait and landscape photographs he captured over a 50-year career, the oddball lifestyle he led – and is one of Liverpool’s best small museums. Lovingly restored and preserved by the National Trust, Hardman’s House is a space in which you can’t turn without seeing something – be it a prize-winning portrait or simply a pile of old newspapers.