The 8 best Bristol attractions

This isn’t just a convenient way of getting from Clifton Village to Lea Woods or a dizzying vantage point from which to admire astonishing views – it’s an internationally recognised symbol of the city and a source of great pride to anyone who calls Bristol home. Opened in 1864, the bridge was completed as a tribute to its designer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who died before it could be finished. You’ll now find a visitors’ centre on the Somerset side in Leigh Woods, and perched up on the hill on the Bristol side, you’ll find the Clifton Observatory.

Even from the outside, the SS Great Britain is impressive, but an official visit is well worth the ticket price. No matter your age, it’s impossible not to be delighted by the entrails of this reconstructed steamship. Restoration has been carried out brilliantly; best of all, you can witness the noise and the huge, moving pistons of the engine room. There are evocative period soundscapes everywhere and in the kitchens a whiff of freshly baked seafarers’ bread. With storytellers in period dress, workshops on conservation and even a chance to climb the rigging in the warmer months, there really is no excuse not to visit this outstanding achievement of historical preservation.

Trying to list all the attractions at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery makes you sound like a carnival showman. Egyptian and Ancient Assyrian artefacts! Diamonds and fossils! Alfred the stuffed gorilla! Contemporary ceramics and glassware! Not to mention the balcony gallery and an art collection ranging from Pissarro to the Old Dutch and Italian Masters. Stepping into the high atrium and seeing the Bristol Boxkite suspended above your head in flight, there’s a feeling of childish excitement. Think the Natural History Museum, but with added Victorian and Edwardian paintings.

This place is very tricky to sum up. Where to start? The eighteenth-century Grade II-listed mansion building? The museum of social history oddities, from toys to toilets? The domed picture room, with its fine art collection? The 600 acres of stunning parkland? For convenience, the museum. Kids (and adults, probably) will be alternately delighted and freaked out by the displays of old toys, dollhouses and games, some of them more than 200 years old. There are beautiful fabrics and dresses from the 1730s to pore over in the costume collection, as well as an exhibition showing how everyday domestic living has changed over the past 300 years. You’re looking at a couple of hours well spent.

Bristol’s very own cathedral of consumption opened back in 2008, completely transforming a depressingly shabby central shopping area into one of the prime attractions for locals and out-of-towners alike. Sweeping away the discount stores and carpet shops that previously occupied the site where the M32 ends and Broadmead begins, Cabot Circus brought decent shopping, restaurants, designer stores and a cinema fit for the twenty-first century to the middle of town. The main covered Circus area boasts all the usual shopping-centre keystones, from American Apparel to Zara. And unusually for a city-centre shopping centre, it’s all very tastefully done.

For centuries, Bristol’s greatest asset has been the docks and floating harbour around which it is built. From pirates and sugar traders to the pleasure-seekers of today, the waterways at the heart of the city have drawn trade and talent to Bristol from around the world to help create the city we all know and love today. The days of huge galleons mooring up in the docks have long gone, but the floating harbour remains and today provides a unique waterside setting for a very modern city. For visitors and locals alike, the museums, restaurants, bars, galleries and cafés that fringe the Harbourside area of the city are some of the city’s greatest attractions.

Rather than traipsing around a museum that has installed a kids’ trail as an afterthought, this place is built on educating and entertaining children of all ages (and adults, if you have a sense of fun). Think everything science, from invention labs to a mini Aardman animation studio, a planetarium and, yes, a real human brain on display. They try to please everyone here, with specific days for under-fives – reduced ticket prices for parents – and whole sections aimed at under-eights. If the thought of a child-filled science centre fills you with horror, they hold adults-only evenings, too, where you can wander through the exhibits, beer in hand.

The multiple limestone caves that make up Wookey Hole (in nearby Somerset) have been a source of fascination and intrigue for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. From prehistoric cavemen and pagan druids to Victorian explorers and excitable modern-day schoolchildren, the caves and the River Axe that mysteriously flows from them have caught the imagination of generations of visitors. The caves themselves are stunning, their stalagmites, stalactites and natural lakes beautifully lit up for all to marvel at. Guides delight in filling you in on the many mysteries and tall tales that have been ascribed to this place down the centuries.