International Slavery Museum

Unflinching account of Liverpool's role in the transatlantic slave trade

Address Albert Dock, Liverpool, L3 4AQ

Housed on the third floor of the Merseyside Maritime Museum at Albert Dock, the International Slavery Museum is one of the only museums in the world dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade, its legacies, and the long history of African enslavement and resistance. The displays cover West African life before European contact, the brutal middle passage, plantation life in the Americas, and the long arc of abolition and civil rights movements.

The museum doesn't shy away from Liverpool's central role: at its peak the city handled over 40 percent of the European slave trade, and the wealth this generated built much of the city's grand civic architecture. Entry is free.

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A story
Liverpool merchants outfitted around 5,000 slave voyages between 1700 and 1807, carrying an estimated 1.5 million Africans across the Atlantic — more than any other British port. The museum opened in 2007 on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade.

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