England Guide
East Anglia
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Opening time: Mon– Fri 10am–4.30pm, Sat 10am–5pm & Sun 1–5pm
Price: £6.50 all zones, £4.50 per zone
Address: Norwich Castle, Castle Meadow
Website: www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk
Perched high on a grassy mound in the centre of town – and with a modern shopping mall drilled into its side – the stern walls of Norwich Castle date from the twelfth century. Formerly a reminder of Norman power and then a prison, the castle holds the Castle Museum and Art Gallery, which is divided into three zones. The Art and Exhibitions zone is the pick, scoring well with its temporary displays and boasting an outstanding selection of work by the Norwich School. Founded in 1803, and in existence for just thirty years, this school of landscape painters produced – for the most part – richly coloured, formally composed land- and seascapes in oil and watercolour, paintings whose realism harked back to the Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century. The leading figures were John Crome (1768–1821) – aka "Old Crome" – and John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), who is generally acknowledged as one of England's finest watercolourists. Both have a gallery to themselves and, helpfully, there's also a gallery given over to those Dutch painters who influenced them.
The castle keep itself is no more than a shell, its gloomy walls towering above a scattering of local archeological finds and some gory examples of traditional forms of punishment. More unusual is a bloated model dragon, known as Snap, which was paraded round town on the annual guilds' day procession – a folkloric hand-me-down from the dragon St George had so much trouble finishing off. Guided tours explore the battlements and the dungeons.