6 Best Sights in Chichester, The Southeast

Standing on Roman foundations, 900-year-old Chichester Cathedral has a glass panel that reveals Roman mosaics uncovered during restorations. Other treasures include the wonderful Saxon limestone reliefs of the raising of Lazarus and Christ arriving in Bethany, both in the choir area. Among the outstanding contemporary artworks are a stained-glass window by Marc Chagall and a colorful tapestry by John Piper. Keep an eye out, too, for the memorial to Gustav Holst: the composer's ashes were interred here as he wished to be close to his favorite Tudor musician, Thomas Weelkes.

Entrance to the cathedral is free, though donations are very welcome, particularly as the roof is in the midst of a £5 million restoration. Forty-five-minute "drop-in" tours (£4 per person) begin every day except Sunday at 11:30 am and 2:30 pm, or you can prebook private tours that concentrate on areas like art, stained glass, and the cathedral's transatlantic ties with the United States; call or go online for details. After visiting the cathedral's interior, be sure to walk around its pretty cloisters, where you'll also find a lovely café and shop.

This small but important collection of mostly modern British art includes work by Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. It's in a modern extension to Pallant House, a mansion built for a wealthy wine merchant in 1712 and considered one of the finest surviving examples of Chichcester's Georgian past. At that time, its state-of-the-art design showed the latest in complicated brickwork and superb wood carving. Appropriate antiques and porcelains furnish the faithfully restored rooms. Temporary and special exhibitions (usually around three at once) invariably find new and interesting angles to cover.

In 1960, workers digging a water-main ditch uncovered a Roman wall, thus beginning a decade of painstaking archaeological excavation of this site, which revealed the remains of the largest, grandest Roman villa in Britain. Intricate mosaics (including Cupid riding a dolphin) and painted walls lavishly decorate what is left of many of the 100 rooms of the palace, built in the 1st century AD, possibly for local chieftain Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus. You can explore the sophisticated bathing and heating systems, along with the only example of a Roman garden in northern Europe. An extension has added many modern attributes, including a video reconstruction of how the palace might have looked. The site is 1½ miles west of Chichester town center, a 30-minute walk.

Set over three floors, this fascinating museum tells the story of Chichester and the surrounding area over the last 500,000 years. It's built around the remains of a Roman Bathhouse, so an entire floor is given over to life in Roman Chichester (or Noviomagus Reginorum, as it was known then). Explore further, and you'll delve both back and forward in time, with exhibits ranging from Bronze Age remains to 17th-century memorials. There are also excellent, regularly changing exhibitions on local history.

One of the National Trust's greatest treasures, Petworth is the imposing 17th-century home of Lord and Lady Egremont and holds an outstanding collection of English paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds, and van Dyck. There are also 19 oil paintings by J. M. W. Turner, the great proponent of romanticism who often visited Petworth and immortalized it in luminous drawings.

A 13th-century chapel is all that remains of the original manor house. The celebrated landscape architect Capability Brown (1716–83) added a 700-acre deer park; today, it has the largest herd of fallow deer in England. Other highlights include Greek and Roman sculpture and Grinling Gibbons wood carvings, such as those in the spectacular Carved Room. Six rooms in the servants' quarters, among them the old kitchen, are also open to the public.

On the outskirts of Singleton, a secluded village six miles north of Chichester, is this sanctuary for historical buildings dating from the 13th through 19th century. Among the 45 structures moved to 50 acres of pretty wooded meadows are a cluster of medieval houses, a working water mill, a Tudor market hall, and a Victorian schoolhouse. Look carefully, and you might recognize some of the structures from the hit Amazon/BBC TV show Good Omens, while British TV fans will notice that the Court Barn is the main setting for the BBC's The Repair Shop. The buildings are brought to life with regular tours, talks, and demonstrations.