Windsor & Royal Borough Museum
The Guildhall, High Street, Windsor SL4 1LR
Did you know George IV kept a giraffe in Windsor Great Park? Or that royal mistress Nell Gwynn called Charles II 'my Charles the third' because she'd bedded two other Charleses previously?
Such is the enjoyable trivia on offer in Windsor's little local history museum, opened by the Queen in 2011. It's housed in a single room in the historic Guildhall, where both Charles & Camilla and Elton John & David Furnish tied the knot in 2005.
Small it may be, but the museum's exhibits are imaginatively done – a blood-spattered animated book romps through the town's past, and local notables (including architect Sir Christopher Wren) tell recorded tales through audio headsets. Kids can have fun dressing up as courtiers or pelting each other in medieval stocks with soft-toy vegetables. You're through the museum in half an hour, but it captures the bawdy majesty of the town remarkably well.
