Museums in London
15 museums in London, each one on the Guide on merit.
Crossness Pumping Station
Museum · Abbey Wood
A Victorian sewage pumping station opened in 1865 as part of Sir Joseph Bazalgette's system to save London from the Great Stink. The Grade 1 Listed building houses a working steam beam engine and ornamental cast ironwork described as a cathedral of spectacular design. Guided tours run on select Tuesdays and Sundays, with a museum holding over 400 artefacts including a Toilet Timeline tracing 5000 years of sanitary technology.
Dennis Severs' House
Museum · Spitalfields
A candlelit Huguenot house frozen mid-life that you tour in silence, no talking and no photos.
Book the Silent Night tour rather than daytime, and slow right down.
Estorick Collection
Museum & gallery · Canonbury
Britain's only museum of modern Italian art, Futurists and Morandi in a Georgian townhouse off Canonbury Square, with a garden café. A couple of quiet hours.
It is compact enough for an hour or two, so time a visit around the temporary exhibitions and end in the garden cafe.
Freud Museum
Museum · Hampstead
Freud's last home in leafy Hampstead, his study and the famous couch kept as he left them in 1939. There's a film-prop couch in another room that you can lie on.
Go for the rotating contemporary exhibition that reframes the house, and note it is Wednesday to Sunday only.
Garden Museum
Museum · Lambeth
Britain's museum of gardens, in the deconsecrated church of St Mary-at-Lambeth by Lambeth Palace, with a courtyard garden and a café room.
The cafe and the small courtyard knot garden are worth it on their own, even without a museum ticket.
Grant Museum of Zoology
Museum · Bloomsbury
London's last zoological museum, a free pocket cabinet of skeletons and the notorious jar of moles.
Check the UCL term-time hours before you travel, and find the jar of 18 moles for the photo.
Japan House London
Museum & gallery · Kensington
Free Japanese design exhibitions on Kensington High Street, a tea-and-confectionery counter on the ground floor and a robatayaki above. Quiet, and more rewarding the more Japan already interests you.
The gallery and shop are free to enter, so it works as a drop-in even without a restaurant booking.
Leighton House and Sambourne House
Museum · Holland Park
A Victorian artist's gilded fantasy home with a tiled Arab Hall most Londoners have never set foot in.
Buy the joint ticket and do the stranger Sambourne House next door, often timed-entry only.
Museum of the Home
Museum · Hoxton
The old Geffrye almshouses in Hoxton, free: a walk through middle-class front rooms from 1600 to a 1998 Shoreditch flat, plus period gardens out back. A quiet, lovely hour.
The period gardens are part of the free site, so time a visit for dry weather to see them.
Old Operating Theatre Museum
Museum · London Bridge
Europe's oldest surviving operating theatre, up a tight spiral stair in a church garret by London Bridge, herbs drying in the rafters. Pre-anaesthetic surgery, vividly told.
The entrance is a narrow spiral staircase with no lift, so it is not step-free; last admission is 4.15pm.
Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
Museum & gallery · Ealing
Sir John Soane's restored Grade I villa in Ealing, with a contemporary gallery alongside. Architecture worth leaving Zone 1 for.
First Thursday of the month it opens late to 8pm, and it is shut Monday and Tuesday.
The Cinema Museum
Museum · Kennington
A volunteer-run archive of cinema-going history in the old workhouse where Chaplin once lived.
No walk-ins. You have to book ahead, and opening times are irregular, so check the site before you cross London for it.
The Hunterian Museum
Museum · Holborn
Centuries of surgical and anatomical specimens in glass, fascinating and not for weak stomachs.
Pre-book a free slot and catch the Wednesday 2.15pm curator's tour. Free lockers let you crouch to the low cases.
The Wallace Collection
Museum & gallery · Marylebone
A private mansion of Old Masters, Sèvres porcelain and one of the world's great armour collections, free, just off Marylebone High Street. The glass-roofed courtyard is the calm.
The glass-roofed central courtyard restaurant is a calm lunch spot most visitors walk straight past.
Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities
Museum · Hackney
An overflowing cabinet of shrunken heads, occult relics and jars best not examined too closely.
Pair it with an absinthe booking upstairs for discounted entry, and give it real time.
Questions
Where in London are these museums?
The most are in Abbey Wood (1) and Bloomsbury (1), and the rest are across 13 more areas.
Does anyone pay to be on this page?
No. Nothing on the Guide is a paid placement.
Is this list kept up to date?
The page is built from the live Guide, so a place that closes or leaves the Guide leaves this page too.
How are the places chosen?
How the Guide picks places is set out in How Vana chooses.
The whole Guide is in the app, and it is free.
A free, independent guide to London. Nothing here is a paid placement.