Denver Museum of Nature & Science

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science offers a wide range of exhibits and programs that engage visitors in the natural world. Highlights include the Gates Planetarium, the new Infinity Theater, and a variety of permanent and temporary exhibitions covering topics from anthropology to zoology. The museum also provides educational programs, special events, and a museum shop for unique souvenirs. Located in Denver’s City Park, it serves as a hub for science education and community engagement.

Planning your visit

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has an advantage most natural history museums lack: it sits at the edge of some of the richest fossil ground in North America, and much of what it displays came out of Colorado and the surrounding states. The Prehistoric Journey exhibition covers that deep time with mounted dinosaurs including Stegosaurus, the Colorado state fossil, and dioramas built around real excavation sites. Alongside it run substantial anthropology halls covering Indigenous cultures of the Americas, an extensive gem and mineral collection reflecting the state's mining history, and wildlife dioramas that are widely regarded as among the finest ever painted.

The Gates Planetarium and the Infinity Theater are separately ticketed alongside general admission, and special exhibitions rotate through. The museum sits in City Park with an east-facing view toward the plains, and the mountain panorama from the upper floors is worth a moment on a clear day.

Practically, it is a full-day museum with children and a comfortable half-day without. Weekends and school holidays are busy, particularly the dinosaur halls, and the planetarium sells out for popular showtimes.

Bookable options include entry tickets, tickets bundled with digital tours for self-guided depth, and skip-the-line private tours that cover the highlights with a guide and avoid the ticketing queue at peak times. For families, deciding in advance whether to add a planetarium show simplifies the day considerably, since show times structure everything around them. Current availability is shown below.