Museum of London

About Museum of London

Museum in the City of London

London Museum, known from 1976 to 2024 as the Museum of London, covers the history of the city from prehistoric to modern times with a particular focus on the social history of its inhabitants: the development of building, dress, culture and belief, presented through interactive displays using reconstructions, visual shows and video. The museum was formed in 1976 by amalgamating the collection of the City Corporation's Guildhall Museum (founded 1826) with that of the London Museum (founded 1911), and it holds the largest urban history collection in the world, with more than six million objects ranging from Roman and medieval finds to the Great Fire, the Victorian city, wartime London and the 20th century. From 1976 to 2022 its main site was on London Wall in the City of London close to the Barbican Centre, part of the Barbican complex built in the 1960s and 1970s to redevelop a bomb-damaged area. In 2015 the museum announced plans to move to the General Market Building at nearby Smithfield, because the old site was hard for visitors to find and because expanding from 17,000 to 27,000 square metres would allow far more of the collection to be displayed. The London Wall site closed permanently in December 2022, and the museum rebranded as London Museum in July 2024 ahead of its reopening, scheduled for 2026, at the historic Smithfield Market. The museum's branch, the London Museum Docklands in Canary Wharf, remains open free of charge and tells the story of the port and its trade, while the new Smithfield home is expected to become one of London's most important museums.

Where:

London, United Kingdom