May 2025: This month is a huge one for London’s museum landscape, with not one, but two huge new spaces opening in the city. First up is the reopening of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing on May 10, following a major three-year, £85 million renovation project to mark the gallery’s 200th anniversary. And then, at the end of the month, comes the V&A East Storehouse, a custom-built space housing hundreds of the V&A’s fashion and design archives and promising Londoners an unparalleled insight into the inner workings of an internationally renowned museum. Both are huge openings that will have a major impact on the city’s cultural landscape for years to come. Plan your visits asap!
London is absolutely world-class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re pretty biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better.
Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check!
Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a big reason why I moved here at the first chance I got, and I’ve racked up countless hours traipsing around display cases and deciphering needlessly verbose wall texts in the eleven years since.
From iconic collections, brilliant curation and cutting-edge tech right down to nice loos, adequate signage and a decent place to grab a cuppa; my colleagues and I know exactly what we want from a museum, and we’ve put in a whole lot of time deliberating which of the city’s institutions are worth your time.
So here’s our take on the 25 best ones to check out around London, ranging from world-famous cultural behemoths to quirky little spots you never knew existed.
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