Check the hours before you drive. Museums, historic sites and public libraries, with current hours, admission, parking and the closures most likely to waste a trip.
Some Delaware favorites keep unusual schedules. Biggs Museum of American Art is closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The Old State House is closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Delaware Art Museum is closed Monday and Tuesday. New Castle Court House Museum is closed Monday and Tuesday. And Zwaanendael Museum is closed Sunday and Monday.
Some closures won't show up reliably on map listings either. The Johnson Victrola Museum is closed for renovation until October 2026, and Newark Free Library is closed for construction.
That's why hours lead every card and every page here. If I can't verify them, I say so rather than make you guess.
The original du Pont black powder works on the Brandywine, plus the family's first house and gardens, spread over a couple of hundred acres. Most people spend two to three hours. It's outdoors as much as in, on gravel and uneven ground.
Gift shop
Accessibility noted
Parking noted
The powder yard is closed 24 August to 4 September 2026. Everything else stays open and general admission is half price for those two weeks.
Delaware's first courthouse and first capitol, built in 1732, in the middle of old New Castle. Free, and guided only — you can't wander it on your own. Tours run every hour or so and take about 45 minutes.
Free
Restrooms
Accessibility noted
Parking noted
Guided tours only, on a fixed timetable. Turn up between tours and you wait.
Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs→
Pre-Raphaelites, Howard Pyle and the Brandywine illustrators, and a sculpture garden, on Kentmere Parkway. Free parking behind the building, which in Wilmington is worth saying. Thursday evenings are free from April to December.
The state's natural history museum, on Kennett Pike north of Wilmington. Four galleries, a dinosaur hall, live animal presentations and a Star Lab. It's built for children and doesn't pretend otherwise — under-16s have to have an adult with them the whole way round.
Gift shop
Everyone under 16 must be with an adult for the whole visit.
Henry Francis du Pont's house and his American decorative arts collection, wrapped in a 60-acre garden inside a thousand acres of meadow and woods. Enchanted Woods is the children's garden and is the reason a lot of families come at all.
Summer hours run 29 June to 6 September 2026 at most branches. They change after that.
Fifteen branches from Claymont down to Odessa, free to walk into. On a wet afternoon it's the most reliable indoor room in the county — warm, quiet, has a bathroom, nobody minds how long you stay. Hours differ branch to branch and change with the season.
Free
15 branches
Newark Free Library is closed for construction. It still shows as open on maps.
Delaware's statehouse from 1791, on The Green in Dover. An 18th-century courtroom downstairs and the old legislative chambers upstairs. Free, guided, and about 45 minutes. There are no restrooms in the building.
Free
Accessibility noted
Parking noted
No restrooms in the building. Plan for that before a tour with children.
Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs→
American fine and decorative arts on Federal Street in Dover — the Peales, Bierstadt, Gilbert Stuart, Brandywine School illustration, early American furniture and regional silver. Open four days a week, Thursday to Sunday.
Eldridge Reeves Johnson, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and Nipper the dog. Phonographs, recordings and Johnson's posthumous Grammy. It is shut for renovation and the division anticipates reopening in October 2026.
Free
Accessibility noted
Parking noted
No restrooms on site.
Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs→
Four public libraries across Kent County, free to walk into: Dover, the Duck Creek regional library at Smyrna, Harrington, and the county library itself on Red Haven Lane.
Free
4 branches
Opening hours aren't published per library on the county's own page. Ring before you drive.
The Dutch-gabled building on Kings Highway in Lewes, built for the 300th anniversary of the 1631 Swanendael colony. Free, self-guided, and small enough to do properly in half an hour. There are no restrooms inside — they're in the park next door.
Free
Accessibility noted
Parking noted
No restrooms in the museum. Public ones are in Zwaanendael Park next door.
Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs→
Fourteen libraries from Delmar up to Bethany Beach, free to walk into. On a wet afternoon at the beach it's the most reliable indoor room in the county — warm, quiet, has a bathroom, and nobody minds how long you stay. There's a bookmobile too.
Free
14 branches
Opening hours aren't published per library on the county's own page. Ring before you drive.
Sussex County Libraries→
Check the hours before you drive
This is the one section where turning up unannounced doesn't work. The Delaware Art Museum and the Biggs are shut Monday and Tuesday. The Old State House is shut Sunday through Tuesday. Hagley closes Wednesdays. Zwaanendael is shut Sunday and Monday, which is half of a beach weekend.
Two are shut for building work right now and still show as open on maps: the Johnson Victrola Museum until autumn, and the Newark Free Library for a construction project. Hagley's powder yard closes 24 August to 4 September, and admission goes half price while it does.
So hours sit at the top of every card and every page here, and where I don't know them it says so instead of implying you're welcome.
Where this dataset stands
12
places listed
7
free to walk into
1
price not published
4
hours not published
Every free one here is state-run. Winterthur and the Biggs publish no admission price on their visit pages at all — that's not an oversight on my end, it's genuinely not published, and both are on the call list.
Why a library is in here
Because on a wet Tuesday it's the most reliable indoor room in the state. Free, warm, has a bathroom, and nobody minds how long you stay. Fifteen New Castle County branches keep fifteen different timetables, which is a nuisance to look up fifteen times, so they're in one table with the number to call beside each one.
All three counties are in now: fifteen New Castle branches, fourteen in Sussex including a bookmobile, and four in Kent. What none of them publish in one place is opening hours, so every row carries the address and the number to ring instead of a timetable I'd have had to invent.
Know someone who'd find this useful? Send it their way. It might save them a wasted trip, give a dog somewhere to run, or help keep the kids busy when it rains.
