Royal Armouries 700
We have a 10-year plan for the refurbishment and redevelopment of the Royal Armouries Museum at Leeds Dock in a major programme of capital projects that will help secure a sustainable future in Leeds for the world’s oldest museum and boost its capacity to drive regeneration and civic placemaking.
The Royal Armouries 700 Masterplan has 3 key aims:
• To make our national collection a meaningful asset for the nation
• To guarantee the future of public access for everyone
• To help drive regeneration & growth
Armed With Hope: The Royal Armouries in Leeds
It is over 700 years since the founding of the original Armouries collection. We are planning a series of projects to refurbish and sustain the main museum building and redisplay its collection to a wider and more diverse audience than ever before.
Placemaking interventions around Leeds Dock and Armouries Square will create more liveable and greener civic spaces for visitors and locals alike and there will be a major development of the Armouries’ Tiltyard complex as a new multipurpose riverside arts, events and conference space.
The programme will drive footfall, create jobs and provide a wealth of new and unique cultural and educational opportunities – but most importantly, it will create an enormous sense of civic and national pride that the world’s oldest museum is here, that we are a part of it and that we are working together to make sure it is being put to the use of building a happier and more peaceful future.
The Armouries 700 programme includes conservation initiatives and investments to better preserve and make accessible our collections and a wide-reaching programme of research, collaboration and co-creation to better tell the stories that matter today.
Armouries 700 comprises 10 discrete projects within the existing Royal Armouries Museum, complementary landscaping works around Leeds Dock and a major new build on the site of the existing Tiltyard complex.
These are summarised below:
- The redevelopment of the current Tiltyard area to become a mixed cultural, conference and events space, including a new connection to the river and creating new green spaces
- A phased, complete refurbishment of our galleries; a redisplay of our collection, creating space for performance, participation and demonstration
- A new centre for learning
- A new special exhibitions gallery
- Creating new visitor amenities, including a new café bar opening onto the Square helping to activate it as a public space
- A new dockside entrance to make connections to the city easier and improve the space
- Refurbishment of our conference, café and commercial spaces
- Improving conservation facilities, extending and improving the Library and Archive
- The refurbishment of our various first floor meeting rooms and classrooms to create new spaces to meet, reflect and debate
- Opening up public access to the upper level of the Hall of Steel
Special Exhibitions Gallery
We are developing a new Special Exhibitions Gallery which will be housed on the fourth floor of the Leeds Museum and will host blockbuster exhibitions and historical stories brought to life by curatorial teams from across the world working in partnership with the Royal Armouries' own curators.
The first exhibition in the new Gallery, Gladiators- Heroes of the Colosseum, will open to the public in Summer 2025. The only international travelling exhibition developed in collaboration with the Colosseum in Rome, Gladiators is being brought to the UK for the first time by the Royal Armouries in partnership with exhibition company Expona and production company Contemporanea Progetti. Through the display of life-size reconstructions, interactive exhibits, multimedia devices and immersive environments the life of the Heroes of the Arena will bring visitors back to ancient Rome.
The development of the Gallery is supported by grants from The Wolfson Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation.
Want to know more or support the project?
Just email communications@armouries.org.uk