Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery

Cornwall's collection since 1818

The museum was founded in 1818 by the Royal Institution of Cornwall, a learned society and registered charity that still owns and runs it today. It has been housed since 1919 in a Grade II listed building on River Street, built in 1845 as Truro Savings Bank and later used as Henderson's Mining School - a building with almost as much layered Cornish history as the objects inside it.

The collection spans Cornish archaeology, including Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts such as the Artognou stone from Tintagel, and one of Britain's finest mineral collections, built around the 18th-century collection of Philip Rashleigh and recently reopened after a dedicated gallery refurbishment. Beyond Cornwall itself, the museum holds Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, and a fine art collection stretching from Old Masters and Pre-Raphaelite works to Cornwall's own artistic movements - Newlyn School painters and the St Ives modernists, including Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson.

Among the museum's most remarkable exhibits is its electrotype copy of the Rillaton Cup, one of the most important prehistoric gold objects ever found in Britain. The original was excavated in 1837 from Rillaton Barrow, a Bronze Age burial mound near Minions on Bodmin Moor, where it was found alongside a bronze dagger and other grave goods in a burial dated to roughly 1700-1500 BC. Corrugated in form and showing stylistic links to Aegean and Mycenaean goldwork, it's often compared to the Mycenaean Vapheio cups and ranks among the finest surviving examples of Early Bronze Age gold craftsmanship in Europe.

As treasure trove, the cup passed to the Crown and remained in the royal household for generations - most famously, it's said King George V kept it on his dressing table as a receptacle for his collar studs, seemingly unaware of its true age and significance. Local folklore layered its own legend on top: a tale of a druid's inexhaustible drinking vessel that brought fatal consequences to anyone who refused to drink from it. Today the original belongs to the Royal Collection and is on long-term display at the British Museum, which is why the piece you'll see in Truro is a faithful electrotype copy - still a striking, tangible link to Bronze Age Cornwall, and worth seeking out on a visit.

Opening Times & Admission

The museum is open daily, 10am to 4pm.