Sir John Soane's Museum

Under a private act of Parliament that Soane himself secured, the home of the neo-classical architect John Soane is preserved as nearly as possible as it was at his death in 1837. He pursued the act through a long campaign in order to disinherit a son he disliked intensely, leaving his house and collections to trustees acting for the nation.

The Grade I listed house beside Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn holds models and more than 30,000 architectural drawings alongside the paintings, sculpture and antiquities Soane gathered over many years. There are paintings by Canaletto, Hogarth, Reynolds, Watteau and Fuseli, three works by his friend J. M. W. Turner, and framed drawings by Piranesi. Among the Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities is the Sarcophagus of Seti I.

Restoration since 1988 has returned rooms such as the drawing rooms, picture room and study to their original colours and object arrangements. It also reinstated the pasticcio, a column of architectural fragments, in the monument court. No. 14, bought in 1997, houses a research library and some 9,000 Robert Adam drawings.