The museum is housed in a new purpose-built building on the Mann Island site at the Pier Head.

The museum, which was designed by architects 3XN and engineers Buro Happold and built by Galliford Try[2] at cost of £72 million, provides 8,000 square metres of exhibition space, housing more than 6,000 objects.

[3] It has flexible spaces that regularly change to enable National Museums Liverpool to show more of their collections.

[6] The museum displays are divided into four main themes: The Great Port, Global City, People's Republic, and Wondrous Place, located in four large gallery spaces.

They tell the story of the city through items from collections of costume and decorative art, entomological and botanical collections and objects representing social and urban history, as well as oral testimonies, archaeological material and photographic archives.