One of the country's best examples of late Georgian architecture has reopened following an eight-month, £5 million project which has reunited its buildings.

Check out the top ten re-enactment and living history events happening at museums and heritage sites cross the UK during summer 2013.

Clad in the Queen's uniform, a group of rowers will monitor swans as part of an ancient tradition on the Thames this month. An exhibition devoted to them explains more.

Karen Snowden, of Scarborough Museums Trust, explains why bathing costumes have sparked fashion trends and controversy across the centuries.

Made by the Italian craftsman during the late 17th and early 18th century, an alluring new exhibition features 20 of the finest string instruments ever made.

In the second part of our series on the exhibit swap going on between ten venues, we get the inside track on amazing artefacts including the earliest lamp.

Educational battlefield visits for schoolchildren, a series of candlelit vigils marking the outbreak of war in 1914 and funding for local community projects will be at the centre of the government's commemoration of the First World War.

The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Natural History Museum are among ten venues swapping and re-interpreting weird and wonderful exhibits this summer.

A gemstone bearing the heraldic badge of a Viscount has allowed curators to put dates to artefacts ahead of a major exhibition at the Museum of London.

Eight log boats, said to be in "an incredible state of preservation", have been moved to a special refrigeration unit as part of a major archaeological investigation.

Death in the Potteries, swimwear in Glasgow, Mary Queen of Scots in Edinburgh and the reopening of a £5 million Georgian mansion in Bath. Here are our history picks.

We take a look inside the £35 million Mary Rose Museum in Portsmoutn - a replica of one of the greatest ships in Henry VIII's "sea army".

Rolling gaits, whistle-toting officers, strong-legged gunners and dodgy teeth: here are some of the reconstructions of the Mary Rose's crew, compiled by forensic experts.

As part of the worldwide Britten 100 celebrations, the British Library reveals Britten's greatest inspirations and most famous works through a rare array of media.

The Churches Conservation Trust has launched a series of tours exploring some of the fascinating churches it has worked hard to save during the past few years.

Showcasing Herbert Ponting's incredible photographs, the new exhibition at Historic Dockyard Chatham also features a biscuit found on Scott's body and a dressing-up area.

Twelve artists chart the people and places of London in a celebratory exhibition which curators say reflects the "extraordinary landscape on London's doorstep".

The campaign to improve experiences for families in museums has released a new film made by teenagers and details of its annual Family Friendly Award longlist.

The major new exhibition at the British Library offers some compelling insights into how the power of text and images can be used to create social change, says Emily Beeson.

Barbara Windsor, Rob da Bank, Joely Richardson and Tony Robinson are among a cast of 40 well-known Londoners to describe their favourite sites across the capital.

Curators have worked with authors Philip Pullman, Alan Garner and Susan Cooper for a new show at the ancient library where JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis also once worked.

Museums at Night wouldn't be complete without a night-time tour of a medieval castle. Lewes Castle in East Sussex duly obliged, Culture24's Jenni Davdson went along for the ride.

Ben Miller reports from Liverpool where the city's Light Night reveals how a festival can really galvanise a city's imaginative after-hours culture.

Ruth Hazard joins five lucky Museums at Night competition winners who visited the fabled Faber Archive in Bloomsbury for literary tales, readings and rare manuscripts.

Organisers in York say the painstaking process of adding lettering to the side of a 1930s locomotive from Canada is the culmination of a "labour of love".

Revisit the adventures of the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and lose yourself in the fantastical world of The Magic Faraway Tree at this family-friendly exhibition.

A major new gallery celebrating the life of Admiral Lord Nelson and his influence on the Royal Navy and British society during the 18th century is to open in October 2013.

In June 1913 Emily Wilding Davison's cause of death was recorded as "misadventure". Bourne Hall Museum revisits the events of the day in a celebration of her life and the cause for which she died.

The RAF Museum has begun the delicate process of lifting the last remaining World War Two Luftwaffe Dornier bomber from its 1940 resting place beneath the Kent sea.

In what may be the most accurate representation of the King yet, a head based on scans carried out by Leicester Royal Infirmary will form a cranial summer centrepiece in York.

The continuous spray which has protected the timbers of the Mary Rose for three decades has been turned off ahead of a five-year drying-out process for the famous ship.

Taken from Anglo-Spanish historical resources, Cambridge University Library's new show features bandits, murderers, inmates and a gossip-hungry public.

Ruth Hazard manages to get herself into the British Museum's hugely popular blockbuster Pompeii exhibition to find out exactly what all the fuss is about.

Ahead of this year's celebrations reuniting engines which now call Canada and North America home, we take a look back with the National Railway Museum.

Shakespeare's First Folio from 1623 - containing Macbeth, Julius Caesar and more - has been made freely available to leaf through online for the first time.

History lovers at the Oxford Preservation Trust will reopen the rooms where Shakespeare once stayed for a rare series of public tours on the 449th anniversary of his birth.

Young composers are being given the chance to write a piece for the ancient Jacob Kirckman harpsichord as part of a display linking instruments from the Horniman and the V&A.

The Head of Collections at Scarborough Museums Trust tells us why a "wonderful, beautiful" dress from 1790 still looks comfy today.

A £13,000 pistol-concealing pen, presented to the late Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Marwar-Jodhpur by royal family cohort Lord Louis, could go on public show.

The Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham is inviting the public to explore the 80% of its collection which lies hidden within what it mysteriously terms the Eighth Corridor.

Edinburgh's Palace of Holyroodhouse showcases artefacts and photos from the Prince of Wales' unusual four-month tour of the Middle East in 1962.

The Scott Polar Research Institute, in Cambridge, has acquired one of Captain Scott's "last letters", buying one of his only dispatches still in private hands for £79,000.

Organisers at Coventry's popular Transport Museum say they will create a "world-class" museum and community centre after winning Heritage Lottery Fund backing.

Focusing on the everyday and domestic rather than gladiators and emperors, the British Museum's new show calls upon ghosts preserved by volcanic carbonisation.

From William Wordsworth's wedding ring to inked-out lines in her posthumously published Grasmere Journal, a new show ponders the enigma of Dorothy Wordsworth.

A set of 4,000-year-old artefacts, found in the Yorkshire countryside after World War II and donated to the Yorkshire Museum, have gone on public display in Dalby.

Planners have begun consulting on plans to create a landscape-inspired visitor centre and youth hostel at The Sill, within the famous Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site.

A series of fascinating linked exhibitions exploring the impact of war on the country house and its communities goes on show throughout Yorkshire in 2013 and 2014.

Dot Dot Dash at the National Library of Wales traces key milestones of communication in Wales through film and audio archives, cartoons and retro gadgets.

A "monumental and powerful" cross, commissioned thanks to the funding of an eighth century King, is being put back together more than 1,000 years later.