Liverpool museums set for three-year closure as part of major redevelopment plans

Visitors don't have long left to explore two of Liverpool's most prestigious museums.

Both the International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum will be closing their doors for a period of essential repair and maintenance works from January 5, ahead of a major redevelopment project, subject to funding. Both museums are due to reopen in 2028.

Head of the Maritime Museum Ian Murphy told LiverpoolWorld: "When the Maritime Museum opened in the 1980s, it was a really visionary endeavour, and I think it did set up Liverpool as a tourist destination and the waterfront as a place to go for decades, and this is an opportunity to really build on that."

Since 1986, the Maritime Museum has told the story of one of the world's greatest ports and the people who lived in, worked on, or passed through it. Plans for the site include a striking iron and glass bridge that will connect the re-imagined International Slavery Museum galleries in the Hartley Pavilion to the annexed MLK Jr Building.

In 2007, the International Slavery Museum opened on the third floor of the Maritime Museum. For almost 20 years, the museum has explored the impact and legacies of transatlantic slavery.

Head of the International Slavery Museum, Michelle Charters, told us: "What we can do by having our own building, by having our own front door, is to be proud of the journey that we've taken both as a museum and a community. The most important thing is for it not to just be a local story because it has a global impact."

When the museum is closed, it will embrace new opportunities to share its collections and stories. Learning teams are already offering school sessions off-site, and the museum's Archives Centre will reopen in a temporary space during the closure period, and special pop-up displays off-site are being developed.

The redevelopment of the International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum is part of the wider Waterfront Transformation Project.