5 Best Sights in Stratford-upon-Avon, Stratford-upon-Avon and the Heart of England

The hometown of Shakespeare has developed an international reputation for theater and is home to the world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company. It’s a rite of passage for serious stage actors to pass through here at some point. Overlooking Bancroft Gardens and with views along the River Avon, the main theater building is a sight in itself. There are three or four theaters to choose from, depending on the season: the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which is the largest and features a thrust stage; the older Swan Theatre, where many Shakespearean actors prefer to perform; and the Holloway Theatre outside, wonderful in spring and summer.  You can also visit The Other Place, traditionally presenting more experimental plays. A couple of minutes’ walk away from the main site (toward Holy Trinity Church), it has a cool café. At the main theater, you can take the lift to the top of the tower for incredible views of the town and countryside. Tours are highly recommended and take you behind the scenes to places like the main theater auditorium while set changes are taking place or (if you're lucky, as tours are not the same) to the costume department across the road.

Push buttons and pedals to your heart's content to make the more than 70 exhibits in the wacky Mechanical Art & Design Museum come alive. Witty, beautiful, and intricate automata and examples of kinetic art will clank, whir, and rattle away. Marbles and table tennis balls bounce through looping runs, a typewriter plays tunes on glasses and bottles, and two trains chuff around high up on the walls. Kids will love constructing their own marble run, and grown-ups will marvel at the Kitchenator display. There’s also a shop full of weird and wonderful things.

Dating from the early 15th century, this is where a young Shakespeare went to school and where he was allegedly first introduced to the world of theater. Once the administrative center of the town, it now serves as a heritage center where visitors can see medieval wall paintings, including two of the oldest surviving Tudor roses in England, plus take part in a lesson in the room where Shakespeare was taught. Visitors can don period costumes and try writing with a pen and quill. In the 16th century, the Guildhall was where the city council once sat, including John Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s father, who was town mayor in the 1560s. Around this time it also became home to the King’s New School, and shortly afterward William Shakespeare attended as a pupil. On the first floor is the Guildhall proper, where traveling acting companies performed to obtain their licenses. Many historians believe that it was after seeing the troupe known as the Earl of Leicester’s Men in 1587 that Shakespeare got the acting bug and set off for London. 

The United Kingdom’s largest exotic butterfly collection is housed in a tropical greenhouse, a two-minute walk past the Bridgefoot bridge (spiders, caterpillars, and insects from all over the world also make their home here). Kids can watch as butterflies emerge from pupae, search for caterpillars among the plants, or take a look at a toxic black widow spider. The ant colony is another highlight. There is also a fantastic shop, plus places to picnic in the lovely garden.

Tread carefully over the cobbles, and enter Tudor World on Sheep Street to find a dimly lit and quirky maze of displays that explore, with the help of Tudor mannequins, aspects of the 16th century, including the plague years, early medicine, witch trials, bearbaiting, punishment, and alleged ghosts. Kids will enjoy peering round the curtains and opening the boxes of smells. At night, ghost tours by lantern light (suitable only for adults and older children) explore the house’s paranormal history in spooky detail.