Things to Do in Nottingham

Editor's picks

A local's shortlist — the places worth your time first, each with a tip.

Nottingham Castle & the caves beneath it

Landmark · City centre, on Castle Rock

A seventeenth-century ducal mansion on a sandstone crag where the medieval castle stood, with a museum, a gallery and a network of caves and passages cut into the rock below.

Local tip: The castle's recent history is the story locals will tell you: it closed in November 2022 when the trust running it was liquidated, twenty months after a £33 million redevelopment, and reopened on 26 June 2023 under the council's own museums service. Book the cave tour rather than just the galleries — Mortimer's Hole, the passage cut down through the rock, is the part worth coming for.

The City of Caves

Culture · Under the Broadmarsh, city centre

Part of a network of more than 800 man-made sandstone caves beneath Nottingham — medieval tanneries, cellars, a Second World War air-raid shelter — the largest such network in Britain.

Local tip: The caves are the reason Nottingham exists where it does: the sandstone is soft enough to dig with hand tools and stable enough not to collapse, so people have been carving cellars under this city since the Middle Ages. Its old Welsh name, Tigguo Cobauc, meant 'place of caves'. Above ground, the old Broadmarsh centre was demolished and the site is being turned into public green space — a genuinely unusual thing for a British city to do with prime centre land.

The Lace Market

Neighborhood · East of the city centre, around St Mary's Church

A quarter-mile grid of tall Victorian lace warehouses, now flats, bars, studios and Nottingham Trent's law school, with the medieval parish church in the middle of it.

Local tip: It was never a market — it was where lace was finished, stored and sold, and the buildings were designed to show off bolts of it in the best possible light, which is why the windows are enormous. Walk it in the evening when the offices empty and the bars on Broad Street and Hockley pick up.

Wollaton Hall & Deer Park

Nature · Wollaton, three miles west of the centre

An Elizabethan prodigy house of 1588 standing on a hill in 500 acres of park, with herds of red and fallow deer that have been there for centuries and a natural history museum inside.

Local tip: It was Wayne Manor in The Dark Knight Rises, which is the fact everyone leads with — but the deer are the reason to come, and they are genuinely wild animals that get aggressive in the autumn rut. The park is free and open daily; the hall charges for some exhibitions.

Sneinton Market & Hockley

Food · East of the centre, between the Lace Market and Sneinton

The Avenues at Sneinton Market — a set of restored 1930s market units now full of small independent food, coffee and design businesses — running into Hockley's bars, the Broadway cinema and the independent shops.

Local tip: Sneinton is where the interesting food is now; Hockley is where it was ten years ago and where the drinking still is. The Broadway is a genuinely good independent cinema with a bar people actually sit in. Go on a Saturday, when the Avenues traders are all open.

Green's Windmill

Hidden gem

Culture · Sneinton, a mile east of the centre

A working black tower windmill on a hill in Sneinton, restored and grinding flour, with a small science centre attached.

Local tip: George Green, the miller who worked here, was almost entirely self-taught and in 1828 published an essay introducing what are now called Green's functions and Green's theorem — mathematics without which modern physics, and MRI scanning, would not work. He is buried across the road. The mill is free, it is run by the council, and hardly anyone in the city has been.

Explore 135 places across Nottingham

Museums, landmarks, monuments, heritage sites and parks — mapped, with photos. The most notable spots first.

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Museum · 7Landmark · 4Monument · 4Religious · 103Archaeological · 4Park · 9Attraction · 4Open in OpenStreetMap

Museums & galleries

(7)

Photograph unavailable Nottingham Contemporary

Museum

Nottingham Contemporary

UK charitable organization

Editor's picks

Nottingham Castle & the caves beneath it

The City of Caves

The Lace Market

Wollaton Hall & Deer Park

Sneinton Market & Hockley

Green's Windmill

Explore 135 places across Nottingham

Museums & galleries

Nottingham Contemporary

National Justice Museum

Papplewick Pumping Station

Nottingham Industrial Museum

Surface Gallery

Ruddington Framework Knitters Museum

Syson

Landmarks & architecture

Nottingham Castle

Old Market Square

Wilford Toll Bridge

Midland Railway Gate Piers

Monuments & memorials

Lenton War Memorial

Aspire

War Memorial

Queen Victoria

Places of worship

St Mary's Church, Nottingham

All Saints' Church, Nottingham

Albion Congregational Church

All Saints' Church, Stanton on the Wolds

St Alban's Church, Sneinton

St Peter's Church, Nottingham

St Helen's Church, Burton Joyce

St Lawrence's Church, Gotham

St Mary's Church, Bunny

St Mary's Church, Lowdham

Church of St Michael

Church of St Giles

Church of All Saints

Church of All Saints

St Faith's Church, Nottingham

Christ Church, Chilwell

Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall

Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Bramcote

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Keyworth

Church of the Good Shepherd, Nottingham

Friary United Reformed Church

Holy Trinity Church, Tythby

Shakespeare Street Wesleyan Reform Chapel

St Mary's School

All Saints' Church, Cotgrave

Holy Cross Church, Epperstone

Holy Trinity Church, Lambley

Christ Church, Cinderhill

Holy Trinity Church, Ratcliffe-on-Soar

St. George's Church, Barton in Fabis

St. Giles' Church, Cropwell Bishop

St. John the Baptist Church, Beeston

St Matthias' Church, Nottingham

St. Paul's Church, Carlton-in-the-Willows

St Paul's Church

St Peter's Church, Ruddington

St. Stephen's Church, Hyson Green

St Columba's Church

St John the Evangelist's Catholic Church, Nottingham

Long Eaton Baptist Church

St Peter's Church

St James' Church, Long Eaton

St Catherine's Church, Cossall

St Laurence's Church, Gonalston

St Luke's Church, Kinoulton

St Patrick's Church, Nuthall

St Peter & St Paul's Church, Oxton

St Peter's Church, East Bridgford

St Wilfrid's Church, Calverton

St Wilfrid's Church, Wilford

St Aidan's Church, Caythorpe

Hyson Green Methodist Free Church