Heritage centre


A heritage centre, center, or museum is a public facility – typically a museum, monument, visitor centre, or park – that is primarily dedicated to the presentation of historical and cultural information about a place and its people, and often also including, to some degree, the area's natural history. Heritage centres typically differ from most traditional museums in featuring a high proportion of "hands-on" exhibits and live or lifelike specimens and practical artifacts.
Some are open-air museums – heritage parks – devoted to depiction of daily life or occupational activity at a particular time and place, and may feature re-creations of typical buildings of an era. Such sites are often used for experimental archaeology, and as shooting locations for documentaries and historical-fiction films and television. A few are rebuilt archaeological sites, using the excavated foundations of original buildings, some restore historic structures that were not yet lost, while others are mock-ups built near actual sites of historic value. Many also have living museum features, such as costumed staff, demonstrations of and short courses in historical craft-working, dramatic presentations, and other living history activities. Others may be more narrowly focused on a particular occupation or industry, such as rail transport or the early factories or mines around which a community developed.
The distinction between a heritage centre or park, and a history-based theme park can become blurred, as at Nikko Edomura, focused on Feudal Japan, and Wild West City, a self-described "heritage theme park" about the American Old West.

Examples, by theme

General and multi-era