London Museums: Our Top 21 for Every Type of Visitor

The Best Art Museums in London

Art and London are a natural fit. Here are the art museums you really shouldn’t miss:

Tate Modern

The Tate Modern, with its six floors, is the largest museum of modern art in the world.

Here you’ll find works by world-famous artists like Frida Kahlo, Van Gogh, and Picasso — and you could easily spend an entire day here.

Even if you’re not a huge art fan, the building alone is worth the trip: it’s a former power station sitting right on the bank of the Thames. Seriously stunning.

The Tate Modern is also a great pick for families with kids, as there are loads of interactive activities where children can, for example, recreate the artworks on display.

Up on the roof, one of our favorite London insider tips awaits: a restaurant with a viewing platform offering a fantastic panorama of the river and the city.

The permanent exhibition is free, though you do have to pay for temporary exhibitions.

Tate Britain

The Tate Britain is the largest collection of British art spanning the 16th to the 21st century.

On display are paintings, prints, and sculptures by British artists — around 3,200 works in total, with new temporary exhibitions added regularly.

Admission is free, while tickets for temporary exhibitions cost around £10 depending on the show.

National Gallery

The National Gallery displays exclusively paintings — around 2,000 works by international artists from various eras.

You can see works by Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt, among many others.

It’s one of the most visited london museums and sits right on the famous Trafalgar Square. Admission is free here too.

Victoria & Albert Museum

The Victoria & Albert Museum is a different kind of art experience — one that focuses on the production process and craftsmanship behind a work.

Here you can admire oriental rugs, jewelry, garments by famous designers, oil sketches, statues, and weapons from cultures and eras across the globe.

The museum owes its name to its founders, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who opened it in the mid-19th century.

Admission is free.

Design Museum

The Design Museum is exactly what it sounds like — a deep dive into design across every field imaginable.

Architecture, graphic design, furniture, and fashion — from all of these worlds, you can explore particularly beautiful objects here.

Admission is free.

Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea was founded in 1985 by art dealer Charles Saatchi and showcases contemporary art in the form of paintings, sculptures, sketches, video, and photography.

The works on display come primarily from young British artists — the Young British Artists — who were championed by Saatchi in the eighties.

Admission is free, and there are always fresh temporary exhibitions on rotation.

Historical Museums in London

London and Great Britain have a rich, millennia-old history that you can explore across the city’s many history museums.

British Museum

The British Museum is absolutely one of the top london museums — and honestly, the building alone is reason enough to visit.

Thousands of years of history are on display here, with artifacts from every corner of the world. You can see Egyptian mummies, sketches by Michelangelo, Stone Age excavation pieces, and artifacts from Asia, Africa, and South America.

You could easily spend several hours here, and admission is free.

Crown Jewels at the Tower of London

The Tower of London isn’t just a single tower — it’s an entire fortress on the banks of the Thames.

In centuries past, this legend-steeped site served as the city’s prison, where beheadings and torture were carried out — and you can still visit the prison cells today.

The castle also houses several exhibitions: a display on torture devices, the Royal Armouries, and a chapel dating back to the 11th century.

The real centerpiece, though, is the British Crown Jewels, said to be worth around £20 trillion.

Admission costs around £36, which covers all the exhibitions. If you have a London Pass, entry is already included.

Get your Tower of London & Crown Jewels ticket

Charles Dickens Museum

The Charles Dickens Museum is located in the only surviving home of the famous author — an elegant Georgian townhouse on Doughty Street in Bloomsbury.

Dickens lived here from 1837 to 1839 with his wife and children, and during this time he wrote, among other things, Oliver Twist.

At the museum, you can see over 100,000 objects, including original manuscripts, personal belongings, furniture, and even a lock of Charles Dickens’s hair. Tickets can be purchased at the on-site box office.

There’s also a museum shop and, in the courtyard, a cozy little café where you can try things like cake and Victorian lemonade.

One more thing: the Charles Dickens Museum draws noticeably fewer crowds than many other London museums — a real bonus.

Churchill War Rooms

The Churchill War Rooms, also known as the Cabinet War Rooms, were the underground bunker used by the British government during World War II.

From these rooms — located right next to Parliament — the British armed forces were commanded throughout the war.

You could easily spend one to two hours exploring the once top-secret corridors, taking in the equipment, Churchill’s personal belongings, and the conference room where war strategy was hammered out.

Admission costs £33.

Museum of London

The Museum of London covers the entire history of the city, from the Stone Age right up to the present day.

Here you can explore archaeological finds from several centuries BC, through Roman artifacts, all the way to the Middle Ages and modern times.

Like most of the best museums in London, entry is free of charge. It’s just a few minutes’ walk from St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Great London Museums for Kids

If you’re visiting London with kids, there are several museums that are just as fascinating for children as they are for adults. Here are our family picks:

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is a standout among London museums for kids and adults alike — it’s one of the largest natural history museums in the world.

On display are dinosaur skeletons and fossils, exhibits from the plant world, and the world’s largest meteorite collection. One of the main draws is a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex that roars and snaps at visitors — kids absolutely love it.

Entry is free, which makes it one of the most visited attractions in the city.

Science Museum

The Science Museum is right across from the Natural History Museum — and if your kids still have energy to spare, you can easily tackle both in a single day.

Topics here include astronomy, biochemistry, meteorology, medicine, and physics, among others.

Some seriously important scientific artifacts are on display, like Galileo Galilei’s telescope and the world’s oldest steam locomotive.

Spread across five floors, the museum features loads of interactive stations where kids and adults can test the principles of each subject for themselves.

There’s also the Wonderlab: children ages four and up can conduct their own experiments and watch live shows by chemistry experts.

General admission is free; the Wonderlab costs £15, and children under three get in free.

London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum tells the story of the city’s public transportation — and it’s more fun than it sounds.

On display are not only the iconic double-decker buses, but also subway cars, trolleybuses, and train cars you can actually climb into.

There’s also the Design for Travel gallery, featuring posters, artwork, and historic timetables.

In the subway simulator, you can try your hand at driving a tube train through London’s miles of tunnels — a big hit with kids.

Children up to age 17 get in free; adults pay £25.

Get your London Transport Museum ticket

Cutty Sark

The Cutty Sark is a sailing ship from 1869 that once brought tea to London all the way from China. At the time, it was one of the fastest sailing ships in the world.

Today it’s a museum ship, displayed on land in the Greenwich neighborhood.

You can go on board and, thanks to costumed actors, get a real sense of what life at sea looked like back then.

Admission costs £11 for children and £22 for adults.

Get your Cutty Sark ticket

HMS Belfast

The HMS Belfast is the massive warship anchored near London Bridge. It served in the British fleet during World War II and now operates as a museum ship across nine decks.

Here you can learn about the lives of the 950 people who lived and worked on board, explore the many rooms via hatches and ladders, and dig into the ship’s history through interactive exhibitions.

Worth knowing: you can easily combine a visit to the HMS Belfast with a trip to London’s tallest skyscraper, The Shard — the tower is just a few minutes’ walk away.

We sailed past the HMS Belfast on our boat tour on the Thames, and it’s genuinely impressive even from the water.

Children pay £14.50 admission; adults pay £26.35. Children under five get in free.

Unique Museums in London

In a city as cosmopolitan as London, there are also museums of a more unusual kind. Here are our picks for the most distinctive and offbeat spots:

Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds can now be found in cities around the world, including Berlin and New York. But the original is right here in London, founded by Marie Tussauds in the 19th century.

The London location features around 190 wax figures of celebrities from all walks of life. The Royal Family is of course included, along with international pop stars, actors, and athletes.

There’s also the Marvel 4D Cinema on-site, which requires a separate ticket.

Admission costs £29 online, saving you £10 compared to buying at the door.

Get your Madame Tussauds ticket
Our tip: If you want to visit other attractions alongside Madame Tussauds, Get Your Guide offers a great-value combo ticket that also gets you into the London Eye and Sea Life:

Get the combo ticket for Madame Tussauds, London Eye & Sea Life

Royal Greenwich Observatory

The Royal Greenwich Observatory is London’s historic observatory — the place that, in the 19th century, first defined the Prime Meridian and with it Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Today the research has moved elsewhere, and the building houses a museum dedicated to astronomy and navigational instruments.

Inside you’ll find a massive 28-inch telescope, interactive exhibitions on space exploration, and the first precision clocks and marine chronometers that helped Britain become the world’s leading naval power.

Adult tickets cost £24; children pay £12.

Get your Royal Observatory Greenwich ticket

Horniman Museum

The Horniman Museum was founded by tea merchant Frederick John Horniman at the end of the 19th century and is also a wonderful choice when visiting London with kids.

On display is his collection of artifacts from anthropology, natural history, and music.

There’s an enormous collection of insects, taxidermied animals, an aquarium, and a vast, beautiful garden that’s one of the museum’s main draws.

Admission is free, except for the aquarium: that costs £3.25 for children and £6.50 for adults.

Vagina Museum

On the lively grounds of Camden Market, you’ll find the world’s first Vagina Museum, which has made it its mission to educate the public about the female genitalia.

Through exhibits and menstrual blood rendered in red glitter, centuries-old prejudices and myths surrounding the vagina are put to rest.

Alongside the permanent exhibition there are always interesting temporary shows on rotation, and admission is free.

The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History

The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities is a tiny museum tucked into the basement of a building in the Hackney neighborhood.

On display are all manner of strange objects that collector Viktor Wynd has brought back from around the world.

Highlights include the skeleton of a two-headed cat, voodoo artifacts from New Orleans, and death masks from New Guinea.

The museum is very small, so visits are capped at 30 minutes and require a reservation. Admission costs £8.85.