Arts and Culture in Cambridge

You don't need to stray far from Market Square to find Cambridge's 2 main theatres, the Cambridge Corn Exchange and Cambridge Arts theatre. Other popular venues are Cambridge University's ADC Theatre - where you can catch student productions and rising stars before they're famous - and the Cambridge Junction, worth the short drive or bus ride from the city center for its live music and contemporary dance shows.

Cambridge Corn Exchange hosts classical music performances by the resident Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and visiting orchestras such as the Dresden Philharmonic and Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. You can also catch rock, pop, folk, and comedy stars here.

Operas, musicals, and pantomimes are all on the bill at Cambridge Arts Theatre, which has a busy program of events including many performances suitable for families. Some shows come here directly from London's West End.

Museums and art galleries cluster in the center of Cambridge, many of them free for visitors and several part of Cambridge University. The grande dame of Cambridge museums is the Fitzwilliam with its grand marble entrance and priceless collections. The Ruskin Gallery, by contrast, is a state-of-the-art contemporary venue that specializes in digital art.

Works by French Impressionists, Dutch masters, and British artists grace the Fitzwilliam Museum's huge collections. Those interested in arts and antiquities could spend all day exploring. There's a pleasant courtyard café and gift shop, and the museum hosts regular concerts and talks.

From art inspired by video games to multimedia meditations on war, temporary exhibits at the Ruskin entertain and provoke. Digital and interactive artworks are particularly prominent, and the area beneath the central space is reserved for photography.

The University of Cambridge's portfolio of museums spans everything from prehistoric fossils at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences to statues from classical Greece and Rome at the Museum of Classical Archeology to arctic explorations at the Polar Museum. Most of the museums have free entry and many have special sections and events for kids.

Pride of place at Cambridge University's Museum of Anthropology and Archeology is given to an important collection of art from Fiji. Other exhibits include masks, statues, textiles, and ceremonial objects from Papua New Guinea, West Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

This quiet, off-the-beaten-track Cambridge museum has a collection of hundreds of plaster replicas of Roman and Greek statues. The star of the show is the Peplos Kore, a vividly painted copy of a statue from the Acropolis in Athens.