Admission and Hours
Group Visits
Highlights Tours
Floor Plans
Directions and Parking
Yale and New Haven
Come Explore the Yale Peabody Museum!
InfoTape 203.432.5050
| Now Available! Audio Tour of the Exhibitions
The Yale Peabody Museum was founded in 1866 with a gift from philanthropist George Peabody, at the urging of his nephew, Yale’s O.C. Marsh, the first professor of paleontology in North America and the Museum’s first director. Marsh built many of the Peabody’s great collections, and today you can see some of his most famous finds — the dinosaurs he named Triceratops, Stegosaurus and “Brontosaurus” — in the Museum’s Great Hall.
Along with more than 11 million specimens and objects in anthropology, botany, zoology, paleontology, entomology, ornithology, and historical scienfiic instruments in its collections, the Yale Peabody Museum is also home to Rudolph F. Zallinger’s murals The Age of Reptiles and The Age of Mammals.
Among the Museum’s permanent exhibitions, you can…
- Step into the world’s cultures past and present in the Hall of Native American Cultures and Daily Life in Ancient Egypt.
- Learn the story of the quest to answer questions about human evolution in Fossil Fragments: The Riddle of Human Origins.
- Explore the wonders of our planet and solar system in the new Hall of Minerals, Earth, and Space.
- Look through windows on the biodiversity of our world that are the Peabody’s 11 dioramas, painted by master artists J. Perry Wilson and Francis Lee Jaques, each a unique blend of art and science.
Come explore!
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Admission and Hours
The Yale Peabody Museum is open:
| Monday through Saturday | 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. |
| Sunday | Noon to 5:00 p.m. |
Admission Fees |
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| $7.00 | Adults |
| $6.00 | Senior citizens 65 years and over |
| $5.00 | Children ages 3 through 18 College students with ID |
| $3.00 | Group admission* |
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The museum offers free individual admission on Thursday afternoons from 2:00 to 5:00 pm during the months of September to June. Groups of 8 or more require advance reservations. |
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* To receive this reduced admission, groups must make a reservation at least 2 weekdays in advance. Group admission is only available with a written confirmation brought to the Museum at the time of the visit. |
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| Admission is free to Peabody Museum members, and members of the Yale University community (with ID). Membership at the Peabody also entitles you to free admission to more than 250 science museums worldwide. |
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The Yale Peabody Museum is wheelchair accessible.
Yale University Accessibility Map
The Yale Peabody Museum is closed on:
- New Year’s Day
Easter Sunday
Independence Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
The best time to visit the Museum is in the afternoons or on weekends. Some halls may be closed to the public on weekday mornings during the school year for school group programs, especially in the spring. To maximize your visit, plan to be here after 1:00 p.m. if you choose to come on Monday through Friday.
There is no cafeteria or lunchroom at the Peabody. Information on local eating places is available at the Admission Desk in the lobby. Visitors are welcome to picnic on the lawns around the Museum.
Some photography with hand-held cameras is permitted in exhibition halls for personal use only; photography of the Zallinger murals The Age of Reptiles and The Age of Mammals is prohibited at all times. All other uses require the advance written permission of the Yale Peabody Museum.
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Group Visits
Every year the Yale Peabody Museum provides educational programs for adults and students.
All groups must make appointments by calling the Department of Public Education at 203.432.3775 weekday mornings.
Programs are available Monday through Friday. The fee for each presentation is $40 plus group admission ($3.00 per person).
Programs for elementary through high school students are offered at no charge to the New Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford public school systems, from September through March 1st.
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Audio Tour of the Exhibitions
The Yale Peabody Museum is proud to unveil its first ever, free-of-charge, 70-minute audio tour featuring an insider’s look at some of our most popular specimens and exhibitions.
There are 3 ways to listen in:
- Stop by the front desk in the Peabody lobby to pick up an automated wand.
- Use your own cell phone to listen to the tour and curator commentaries. Download the Audio Guide Brochure & Map [162 KB PDF] for cell phone instructions (regular charges apply).
- Download the audio tour files HERE to load into your own MP3 player [61.7 MB zip archive].
Whether you have 15 minutes or an hour, we invite you to take this new journey through the Museum exploring Apatosaurus, Turkana Boy in the Fossil Fragments hall, or the art of mummification in Daily Life Iin Ancient Egypt, among other Peabody highlights.
The Yale Peabody Museum gratefully thanks Lucille Alderman for her generous support of this project, and Dody Gall for her tireless energy and inspiration.
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How to Contact Us
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is located in the Science Hill section of the Yale campus, at Whitney Avenue and Sachem Street in New Haven, Connecticut.
Our mailing address is:
Peabody Museum of Natural History
Yale University
P.O. Box 208118
New Haven, CT 06520-8118 USA
Direct inquiries to the appropriate Yale Peabody Museum department or curatorial division.
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