Discover Manchester’s world-beating art galleries and visit Platt Fields

The main event of the city’s vibrant arts scene, Manchester Art Gallery is home to thousands of world-class pieces that showcase both the art history of the city and of Europe as a whole, with the gallery’s collections including work from the Dutch (Bakhuizen, Cuyp), English (Constable, Gainsborough, Turner), Flemish, French (Degas, Gauguin, Renoir), German, Italian, and Hungarian Schools. The gallery is perhaps most famous as a cornucopia of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art, with standout pieces such as John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Auguste Mengin’s Sappho (1877), and William Holland Hunt’s The Light of the World (1851-56) scatteredly adorning the walls. However, the gallery’s highlight is undoubtedly its room dedicated to French Impressionist Pierre Adolphe Valette and his student (and Manchester native) L.S. Lowry, both of whom painted moody, fog-drenched landscapes of Manchester that turned its drab industrial cityscape into dreamlike otherworlds populated by phantom shadows and evanescent buildings. Lowry is nowadays honoured for his contributions to the city as the namesake of The Lowry, a theatre-cum-art gallery on Salford Quays that contains 400 works by the artist in its exhibition space.

Keep an eye on the gallery’s programme as it regularly hosts world-beating temporary exhibitions: past standouts have included retrospectives on Italian master Leonardo Da Vinci, transgressive Indian-British portraitist Raqib Shaw, and radical queer pioneer Derek Jarman. Meanwhile, its curators’ commitment to a progressive and inclusive ethos means that artwork in the collections is constantly being challenged and reconsidered, with guests often asked to participate in such discourse. This comes at the cost of occasional controversy, however - after taking down Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs to spur discussion on the objectification of women’s bodies in classical artwork, with guests being asked to hang Post-It notes containing their thoughts on the issue where the painting once hung, the gallery made national news!

Located three miles south of Manchester city centre, Platt Hall is an eighteenth-century manor home owned by the Manchester Art Gallery, currently under reinterpretation and redesign. Built for Mancunian textile merchant John Lees in the 1760s, the space was converted into an art gallery in 1925 and from 1947 until 2017 operated as the Gallery of Costume, housing 24,000 items that ranged from couture fashion pieces to everyday wear. However, the museum was shut down after sixty years of operation when it became evident that the building was no longer fit for function, leaving the space in a phase of liminality and unknowing. Although not currently reopened to the public (as of the writing of this in 2023), Manchester Art Gallery is exploring new ways to use the home and its eclectic collections, offering sporadic open days for those who want to see how Platt Hall is presently evolving. To find out more about these special events, visit the Platt Hall website here.

In the meantime, however, Platt Fields Park, the 170 acres of open green space that surrounds Platt Hall, remains open as always and is an oasis of escape from the urban landscapes of metropolitan Manchester. The park’s centre-piece is the six-acre artificial lake at its heart, populated by regal swans and waggish ducks, and is perfect for an idyllic stroll on warmer English days. The park is located in Fallowfield, Manchester’s main student area, so gets particularly rowdy in summer with students making the most of the fleeting summer weather. To experience some of Manchester’s world-famous student atmosphere, explore the neighbourhood a bit more and consider some favourite student haunts: the Friendship Inn is an impressive Victorian pub with a bustling outdoor area and notoriously cheap pints, 256 is an iconic student bar in a former church with cheap food in the day and lively club events at night, and Fuel Cafe Bar is one of Manchester’s best veggie eateries, offering a global selection of dishes at unbeatable prices.