Udforsk London

The National Gallery on the north side of Trafalgar Square holds the national collection of Western European painting, more than 2,300 works from the mid-13th century to 1900. Founded in 1824, it opened in William Wilkins's building in 1838, and its rooms range from Giotto and Raphael to Titian, Rembrandt, Turner and Cézanne.

The National Portrait Gallery holds portraits of people who shaped British history and culture, from Tudor monarchs to present-day figures. Founded in 1856, it moved in 1896 to its building on St Martin's Place next to the National Gallery, which reopened in 2023 after a three-year renovation with a new entrance.

The Household Cavalry Museum occupies part of Horse Guards, the 18th-century building on Whitehall that is still the headquarters of the Household Division. It tells the history of the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals through uniforms, standards and personal stories, and a glazed partition looks into the working stables of the King's Life Guard.

The Churchill War Rooms are the underground command centre beneath the Treasury building in Whitehall, used by Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet from 1939 to 1945. Run by the Imperial War Museum and open since 1984, they show the Cabinet Room and the Map Room as they were left in 1945, plus a museum on Churchill's life.

The London Transport Museum occupies the iron-and-glass flower market building of 1871 on Covent Garden Piazza and opened there in 1980. It traces the history of the city's transport with buses, trams, trolleybuses and Underground carriages, among them the first electric Tube train of 1890, as well as posters and driving simulators.

Sir John Soane's Museum is the former home and studio of the architect Sir John Soane on Lincoln's Inn Fields, kept as he left it at his death in 1837 under an Act of Parliament of 1833. Its narrow, top-lit rooms are packed with antiquities, architectural fragments, models and paintings, including Hogarth's series A Rake's Progress.

The King's Gallery, formerly the Queen's Gallery, is the public art gallery of Buckingham Palace, opened in 1962 on the site of the palace chapel bombed in the Second World War. Enlarged by John Simpson and reopened in 2002 with a Doric entrance portico, it shows changing exhibitions of paintings, drawings and other works from the Royal Collection.

The British Museum in Bloomsbury is a museum of human history, art and culture, founded in 1753 and open to the public since 1759. Its Greek Revival building by Robert Smirke surrounds the glass-roofed Great Court, and its collection of about eight million objects includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures and Assyrian palace reliefs.

Handel Hendrix House is a museum in Mayfair at 25 and 23 Brook Street. George Frideric Handel lived at number 25 from 1723 until his death in 1759 and wrote most of his later works there; Jimi Hendrix lived next door in the late 1960s. Visitors see Handel's restored Georgian rooms and the Hendrix flat, returned to its 1960s appearance.

The Royal Mews is the working stables and carriage house of the royal household in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, built to designs by John Nash and completed in 1825. Visitors see the state carriages and coaches used at coronations, royal weddings and state visits, including the Gold State Coach, as well as the harness rooms and the stables of the carriage horses.

Tate Britain on Millbank shows British art from the 1500s to the present day. The gallery opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art, funded by the sugar refiner Henry Tate, in a building by Sidney R. J. Smith; the adjoining Clore Gallery by James Stirling holds the Turner Bequest of paintings and drawings by J. M. W. Turner.

The Imperial War Museum in Southwark covers conflicts involving Britain and the Commonwealth from the First World War to the present day. Founded in 1917, it has occupied the domed former Bethlem Royal Hospital since 1936; two 15-inch naval guns stand at the entrance, and the atrium displays aircraft, a V-2 rocket and a Second World War tank.

Tate Modern is the national gallery of international modern and contemporary art, opened in 2000 in the former Bankside Power Station designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Its collection displays of art from 1900 to the present fill the converted boiler house and the Blavatnik Building extension, and the Turbine Hall hosts large commissions.

The Wallace Collection is a national museum in Hertford House on Manchester Square, the former London townhouse of the Marquesses of Hertford. Bequeathed to the nation in 1897 and opened in 1900, its 25 galleries show Old Master paintings, French 18th-century paintings, furniture and porcelain, and a large collection of arms and armour.

Moco Museum London is the London branch of the Moco (Modern Contemporary) Museum, an independent museum founded in Amsterdam in 2016 that also has a site in Barcelona. It opened in 2024 in a corner building at Marble Arch and shows modern, contemporary, street and digital art in changing displays.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, housed since 1997–98 in a red-brick building by Colin St John Wilson beside St Pancras station. Visitors can see the Treasures Gallery with manuscripts and early printed books, temporary exhibitions and the glass tower holding King George III's library.

Madame Tussauds London is the wax museum founded in 1835 by the French wax sculptor Marie Tussaud; it has occupied its building on Marylebone Road since 1884. Visitors walk through themed rooms with wax figures of royals, politicians, athletes, musicians and film characters, beside the green dome of the former London Planetarium.

HMS Belfast is a Royal Navy light cruiser launched in 1938 and moored on the Thames near Tower Bridge as a museum ship of the Imperial War Museums. She served in the Second World War, including the Battle of North Cape and the Normandy landings, and later in the Korean War. Visitors walk through her decks, from the gun turrets and bridge to the mess decks and engine rooms.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a national museum of art and design in South Kensington, founded in 1852. Its collection of more than 2.8 million objects spans 5,000 years: ceramics, glass, textiles, fashion, jewellery, furniture, sculpture, prints and photography. The Cromwell Road front with its crowned tower was designed by Aston Webb.

The Science Museum is a national museum of science and technology on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, founded in 1857. Its galleries cover steam power, flight, space, computing and medicine, with objects such as the Apollo 10 command module, and the interactive Wonderlab gallery explains scientific principles through experiments.