Museums - Archive Articles

The first Christmas card goes on show in London

1843 was an important year in the history of Christmas, and a new exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum is bringing them together for the first time.

The Clash: Museum of London Calling

It's 40 years since The Clash’s third album ‘London Calling’ was released, and an exhibition has pulled together a host of memorabilia for that iconic album.

Tickets Alert: Photography at Sir John Soane’s Museum

The old house packed full of curiosities is one of those museums that normally bans photography - but not in the evenings.

Go behind the scenes of Piccadilly Circus tube station

A hidden series of tunnels and lift shafts lie out of sight under Piccadilly Circus, and now tours are offered of these hidden spaces.

See a Mercury mission spacecraft in the Science Museum

Sitting near the back of the Science Museum is a full-size model of a spacecraft that's currently on a journey to Mercury.

Exhibition Review: Notgeld and the farting coppersmith

In the British Museum at the moment is an exhibition about a period of German history that's both well known, and hardly known at all - the hyperinflation of the world war periods.

See inside the Museum of London’s new Farringdon home

The Museum of London is set to move soon from its current home into a cluster of semi-derelict Victorian iron and 1960s concrete buildings.

London’s Science City at the Science Museum

There's a new gallery at the Science Museum that shows off an awful lot of wood, brass and books.

Sink into Victorian nostalgia at Pollock’s Toy Museum

Hidden away in a warren of side streets, two old creaky buildings are home to one of the delights of London, a curiously old fashioned toy museum.

The British Empire and animal collecting

A new exhibition at the Grant Museum takes a look at how the attitudes of the British Empire affected the collections of natural wildlife that were brought back to the UK.

The roundel that got cancelled

There's a display in the Transport Museum of roundels used by TfL, but one of them shouldn't be there.

London’s largest ever Bronze Age hoard discovered

The largest ever Bronze Age hoard to be discovered in London, and the third largest of its kind in the UK, has been unearthed in Havering. A total of 453 bronze objects dating between c.900 and c.800 BC have been…

Silvery spiral stairs for East London’s Museum of Childhood

The V&A's Museum of Childhood in East London has secured planning permission for a large revamp of the listed building.

See the Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies

A document that is so rare and fragile that it can only be seen for a few weeks each year has gone on display in the British Museum.

Book review: Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground

Released to tie in with an exhibition of the same name, this book is a picture rich journey through some of the disused and hidden spaces on the London Underground.

Tickets Alert: Train trip into the Jubilee line’s overrun tunnels

There's a chance next month to visit a part of the Jubilee line rarely seen - the overrun tunnels that run beyond Charing Cross station towards Aldwych.

Discover a disused London Underground station in Covent Garden

As you step through the familiar terracotta frontage of an old tube station it's difficult to believe you're two floors above ground, and not deep under it.

Samuel Pepys dinner plate goes on display

This is more significant than it sounds, as it's one of only three items of silver plate known to have belonged to Pepys as part of his personal collection and is now the only one on display in the UK.

Pay a visit to St Bartholomew’s Hospital Museum

Easy to walk past without noticing, but under the old gatehouse to Barts Hospital is a museum to its 900 odd years of history.

A book about London Underground’s famous Moquette

It's a curious thing, Moquette, that hard wearing fabric in bold designs that seems to spark strong passions in people. Is it the design, the familiarity, the heritage, the links with London Transport?

London Underground posters – Special offer for ianVisits readers

Alongside the design of the stations, London Underground's posters heritage is justly world-famous.

Rare watch goes on display in the Science Museum

An intricate British-made watch which sold in 2017 for £3.2 million has gone on display in the Science Museum for the next few years.

Tickets Alert: Affordable vintage train trips

A relief from the prices that steam trains have to charge for trips, as a 1950s vintage trains offers affordable runs along part of the Metropolitan line in September.

Local Museums – Redbridge Museum

The town of Ilford has a local museum that's not called Ilford Museum, but is named after the much larger borough that it's within - welcome to Redbridge Museum.