Royal British Columbia Museum

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Lonely Planet review

The region's best museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum is the first stop for many Victoria visitors. Fans of natural history should make for the 2nd floor and some surprisingly realistic dioramas, including the museum's iconic woolly mammoth. Even better is a stroll through a re-created rainforest, where deer and grizzly bears eye you from between the trees.

The evocative 3rd-floor human history gallery, covering the First Nations, is where ancient tools jostle for space with intricate carvings - check the shamanist artefacts and complete cedar longhouse. Finally, a stroll here among the re-created shops and houses of 'Old Town' provides a colorful introduction to the arrival of the Europeans. There's a semi-independent IMAX Theatre on the ground floor, showing large-screen documentaries and Hollywood blockbusters.