I'm in London this week. I lived in the UK years ago but somehow never made it to half the places on my list. I've been to the British Museum exactly once — for about an hour, which is basically enough to see the gift shop and the Rosetta Stone through a crowd. I spent a full day at the Natural History Museum roughly a decade ago. That's my London museum CV so far, and it's embarrassing.
So I made a plan. Not a polished itinerary — more of a personal checklist of things I'd regret skipping. Some are obvious. Some are weird. Most are free.
The One I Can't Believe I've Never Done
Tower of London. I lived in this country and never visited. The Crown Jewels, the ravens, the Yeoman Warder tours, the spot where Anne Boleyn lost her head — this is a thousand years of English history packed into a single fortress on the Thames. It's not free (around £34–37 on the door), but it's the kind of place where you can easily spend three hours and still feel like you've barely scratched the surface.
The Medieval Palace was refurbished last year, so parts of it will feel new even to people who've been before. I'm told the Yeoman Warder tours run every hour from the entrance and don't need a booking — just show up and listen to a Beefeater tell stories about executions with deadpan British humour.
This is my non-negotiable for the week. View Tower of London on Mooseum →
Going Back With Fresh Eyes
British Museum — properly this time. An hour was a joke. The collection spans two million years and five million objects. This time I want to see the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs, the Lewis Chessmen, and the Sutton Hoo helmet. And I want to catch Sufi Life and Art, a free exhibition exploring centuries of Sufi culture through the museum's collection. If the Samurai exhibition is still running (until 4 May, ticketed), that's 280 objects I didn't know I needed to see. View British Museum on Mooseum →
Natural History Museum — the sequel. Ten years is a long time. The blue whale skeleton in Hintze Hall replaced the diplodocus since my last visit, and honestly, that alone justifies a return trip. If the Wildlife Garden is open — it usually runs from spring to autumn — it's a hidden pocket of calm that most visitors walk right past. Still free, still spectacular. View Natural History Museum on Mooseum →
The Free Heavy Hitters I've Somehow Missed
London is the undisputed capital of free museums. The national museums dropped admission charges in 2001 and the policy has held since. Here's what I'm prioritising:
Victoria and Albert Museum. The world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, and I've never set foot inside. The Cast Courts alone — enormous plaster replicas of Renaissance and medieval sculpture — are supposed to be unlike anything else in the city. The Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art exhibition opens on 28 March, which I'll just miss, but the permanent collection is more than enough. View V&A on Mooseum →
National Gallery. Over 2,300 paintings from the 13th to early 20th century, sitting right on Trafalgar Square. I want to see the Sainsbury Wing for the Renaissance works and whatever else pulls me in. There's a free exhibition running right now — Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse — focused on George Stubbs' life-size painting Scrub, which has only been shown publicly once before. It runs until 31 May. View National Gallery on Mooseum →
Tate Modern. The Turbine Hall, the permanent collection, and that free view from the 10th-floor platform looking across the river toward St Paul's. The building itself — a converted power station — is half the experience. View Tate Modern on Mooseum →
Imperial War Museum. Free entry, and a new exhibition opening on 20 March — Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art — tells the story of the city during the Second World War through the eyes of wartime artists. The permanent Holocaust Galleries are supposed to be extraordinary. This is one of those museums that lingers with you for days. View Imperial War Museum on Mooseum →
Something New and Different
V&A East Museum opens on 18 April — just after my visit, frustratingly. But the V&A East Storehouse in the Olympic Park is already open, and it's a different kind of museum experience: a visible storage facility where you can see objects that would normally be locked away in archives. Free entry. Worth the trip to Stratford.
Sir John Soane's Museum. This is the one I'm most curious about. It's the home of the 18th-century architect John Soane, kept almost exactly as it was when he died in 1837 — crammed floor to ceiling with antiquities, paintings, architectural models, and curiosities. It's tiny, it's eccentric, and it's free. There's an exhibition on right now called Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture, running until 28 June. Open Wednesday to Sunday, near Holborn. View Sir John Soane's Museum on Mooseum →
Dennis Severs' House. Not a museum in any traditional sense. It's a Georgian house in Spitalfields set up as a "historical imagination" — each room is a snapshot of a different era, complete with authentic smells, sounds, and the feeling that the family who lived there has just left the room. The Silent Night Visit (£25) is supposed to be something else entirely: no talking, just candlelight and creaking floorboards. This is the kind of experience you can't get anywhere else.
David Hockney at the Serpentine. His first exhibition at the Serpentine, and it's free. A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting runs until 23 August. Hockney painting the French countryside on an iPad — it shouldn't work, but it absolutely does.
If You Only Have Three Hours
Skip everything above and do this: walk from the Tower of London along the Thames to Tate Modern. You won't go inside the Tower — just see the fortress from the outside, cross Tower Bridge on foot, and follow the South Bank west past City Hall, the Golden Hinde, and Shakespeare's Globe. End at Tate Modern, which is free. Spend an hour in the Turbine Hall and the permanent collection, then take the lift to the 10th-floor viewing platform for one of the best free views in London — St Paul's Cathedral right across the river.
Total cost: nothing. Total walking: about 2.5 km. You'll have seen a thousand years of London from a medieval fortress to a power station full of Picassos, and you'll have walked one of the best stretches of riverfront in any city in the world.
If you'd rather go deep instead of wide, spend all three hours at the British Museum. Start on the ground floor with the Rosetta Stone and the Assyrian reliefs, head upstairs for the Egyptian mummies, and finish in the Enlightenment Gallery for a quieter end. Free, and you'll still only see a fraction of it.
The Practical Bit
Most of the big national museums are free for permanent collections. Special exhibitions are usually £12–20. The Tower of London will cost around £35. Dennis Severs' House is £16 for a day visit, £25 for the evening candlelit experience.
The real cost of a London museum week isn't the tickets — it's the time. You could spend a full day in the British Museum, a full day in the V&A, and a full day between the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum next door. I won't see everything. Nobody does.
But that's the thing about London — it'll still be here next time. The point is to stop saying "I'll get to it eventually" and actually go.
If you're visiting London and want to plan your own museum route, check out our Explore page for an interactive map of museums, or browse our guide to free museums in Europe for more ideas beyond London.