DORCHESTER has a rare choice of museums and exhibitions for a town of its size, with treasures not only from Dorset’s rich history and archaeology but also from China, Egypt and the days of the dinosaurs.

The award-winning Dorset County Museum, founded in 1845, is owned and run by the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. The Museum was the county’s first conservation body, founded because of concern at Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s plans to drive a railway line right through Poundbury Hill fort on the west side of Dorchester and to destroy Maumbury Rings, the neolithic henge monument converted by the Romans into an amphitheatre on the south side of Dorchester.

The museum had several homes until the early 1880s when the architect G R Crickmay was employed to design the present building in High West Street, opened by the ‘father of British archaeology’ General Pitt-Rivers in 1883.

Today the museum is a honeypot and treasured resource for a huge range of age groups and interests from school parties and the children’s club to academics, members and new visitors wanting to find out about prehistory, Romans, dinosaurs, the Victorians, the Jurassic Coast, Dorset writers, artists and farming, to capture just a handful of all that might be explored here. It is a home for all the arts and sciences.

Last year’s opening of the stunning new Jurassic Coast Gallery was a major development. It is regarded as a flagship resource, designed to appeal jointly to families, amateurs and advanced students of geology. Dorset and East Devon’s unique geological landscape is brought to life to reveal the secrets of its 18-million year history.

The Keep Military Museum tells the gripping stories of Dorset and Devon soldiers who’ve served the two counties over the last 300 years right up to the present day.

The Tutankhamun Exhibition, Terracotta Warriors, the Dinosaur Museum and the Dorset Teddy Bear Museum are owned by World Heritage with three of them offering a breathtaking insight into the ancient world while the teddy bears have an irresistible appeal to the child in all of us.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum tells the poignant tale of the six farm labourers exiled to Australia for forming a union in 1834 (later pardoned), while the Old Crown Court and Cells is where they were tried and where Judge Jeffery held his Bloody Assize nearly two centuries earlier. The wealth of historic houses and gardens to visit in the area include Athelhampton, Kingston Maurward and Abbotsbury sub-tropical gardens.