United Kingdom Museums Virtual Tour

The “United Kingdom” (UK), commonly known as Britain, consists of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom has many great cities with some fabulous museums.

London Museums

The British Museum
The National Gallery, London
Tate Britain
The Wallace Collection
The Victoria and Albert Museum
Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
Courtauld Gallery
Tate Modern, London
Science Museum, London
National Portrait Gallery, London
Natural History Museum
Charles Dickens Museum
Hampton Court Palace
Sherlock Holmes Museum
British Library
Imperial War Museum
Churchill War Rooms
Florence Nightingale Museum
Foundling Museum
Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy
Cutty Sark, Royal Museums Greenwich
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Queen’s House, Greenwich
Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Guildhall Art Gallery
HMS Belfast
Jewel Tower
Jewish Museum London
Bank of England Museum
London Transport Museum
Museum of London
Museum of London Docklands
National Army Museum, London
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
Royal Air Force Museum London
Shakespeare’s Globe
Sir John Soane’s Museum
St Paul’s Cathedral
City of London Police Museum
Household Cavalry Museum
Museum of Freemasonry
Tower Bridge, London
Tower of London
Wellcome Collection
Westminster Abbey

Edinburgh Museums

National Museum of Scotland
Scottish National Gallery

Glasgow Museums

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Cardiff Museums

National Museum Cardiff
St. Fagans National Museum of History

Caerleon, Newport, Wales

“National Roman Legion Museum” and “Caerleon Roman Fortress and Bath”

Liverpool Museums

Walker Art Gallery

Manchester Museums

Manchester Art Gallery
Gallery Oldham

Bath Museums

Roman Baths (Bath)

Birmingham Museums

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
British Motor Museum

Leeds Museums

Leeds Art Gallery

Newcastle upon Tyne Museums

Laing Art Gallery

Oxford Museums

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

Highlights of London Museums

The British Museum

The British Museum is one of the oldest public museums in the world. It was established in 1753, the English Parliament founded it and set the model for all other public museums that followed.

Before the introduction of the British Museum as an open museum, museums were private collections of kings, wealthy people, the church, or universities.

The British Museum Act of Parliament in 1753 states that it was founded so that it may “be preserved and maintained, not only for the inspection and entertainment of the learned and the curious but the general use and benefit of the public.”

The National Gallery, London

The National Gallery, London, is an art museum founded in 1824. Its collection includes over 2,300 paintings dating from the 13th century to the 20th century.

It is one of the most visited art museums in the world, and its principal building facade facing Trafalgar Square has not changed for two-hundred years.

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, having opened in 1897.

Tate Britain houses a significant and substantial collection of the art of British art from 1500 to the present day and has extensive holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his collection to the nation.

The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is an art collection housed at Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford.

Its collection comprises a remarkable range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with a significant collection of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, porcelain, and Old Master paintings.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is one of the world’s largest museums of decorative arts and design.

Founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the V&A is located near the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall in London,

Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace

The Queen’s Gallery is an art gallery at Buckingham Palace, home of the British monarch, in London. It exhibits works of art from the Royal Collection on a rotating basis with about 450 works are on display at any one time.

When not on exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, the masterpieces of the Royal Collection may be spread among many historic royal residences in the United Kingdom.

Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld Gallery is an art museum that houses the art collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, a college of the University of London specializing in the study of the history of art.

The Courtauld collection includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other works from medieval to modern times; it is mainly known for its French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

Tate Modern, London

Tate Modern is Britain’s national gallery that holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art.

Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world.

Science Museum, London

The Science Museum is a major museum in London, which was founded in 1857 and today is one of the city’s major tourist attractions. The Science Museum now holds a collection of over 300,000 items; it also contains hundreds of interactive exhibits.

National Portrait Gallery, London

The National Portrait Gallery houses a collection of portraits of historical importance and more recent famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world, established in 1856.

Since then, it has expanded include regional centers at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset.

Natural History Museum, London

Natural History Museum, London exhibits a vast range of life and earth science specimens. Its collection is comprising some 80 million items in botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology, and zoology.

Many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture.

Charles Dickens Museum

The Charles Dickens Museum is the author’s house turned to into a museum about Charles Dickens. The museum is housed in a Georgian terraced house, which was Charles Dickens’s home from 1837 to 1839.

Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine Dickens lived here, and the older two of Dickens’s daughters, Mary Dickens and Kate, were born in this house.

Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace 11.7 miles (18.8 kilometers) south-west and upstream of central London on the River Thames.

The palace building project began Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1515. However, in 1529, as Wolsey fell from favor, the King seized the palace for himself and enlarged it to cater to his royal court.

Sherlock Holmes Museum

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is dedicated to the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Situated in Baker Street, bearing the number 221B by permission of the City of Westminster, although it lies between numbers 237 and 241.

The Georgian townhouse, which the museum occupies, was formerly used as a boarding house from 1881 to 1904 when the stories that describe Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson residing at that approximate location as tenants of Mrs. Hudson.

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the most extensive library in the world.

As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The British Library holds over 170 million items from many countries.

Imperial War Museum

Imperial War Museums (IWM) has branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London.

Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, and its focus is on recording civil and military war efforts and the sacrifice of all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914.

The museum’s collections include archives of personal and official documents, audiovisual material, and oral history, an extensive library, an art collection, and examples of military equipment and technology.

Churchill War Rooms

The Churchill War Rooms in London is one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum.

The museum features the Cabinet War Rooms, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command center throughout the Second World War, and the Churchill Museum.

The Churchill Museum a biographical museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill.

Florence Nightingale Museum

The Florence Nightingale Museum is located at St Thomas’ Hospital on the River Thames in South Bank, London. The museum traces the history and story of Florence Nightingale, “the lady with the lamp.”

Staring with her Victorian childhood to her experiences in the Crimean War, through to her years as an ardent campaigner for health reform. The museum illustrates her legacy and recognizes the critical role and profession of nursing.

Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum in London tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, Britain’s first home for children at risk of abandonment.

The museum houses the Foundling Hospital Collection as well as the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, an international collection of material on Handel and his contemporaries. T

he museum explores the history of the Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram.

Artists such as William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel are central to the Hospital story, and today the museum celebrates how creative people have helped improve children’s lives for nearly 300 years.

Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy

The Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy is a natural history museum that is part of University College London in London, England.

It was established in 1828 as a teaching collection of zoological specimens and material for dissection. It is one of the oldest natural history collections in the UK. It contains around 68,000 biological specimens, many of which are very rare and several of which have been recently rediscovered.

Cutty Sark, Royal Museums Greenwich

Cutty Sark is the last surviving tea clipper ship and the fastest of her time. She is now a museum ship and part of the Museums Greenwich.

The ship, which was built in 1869, has been raised over three meters allowing visitors the unique experience of exploring underneath and inside this 150-year-old sailing ship.

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, is a maritime museum. The museum forms part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and it also incorporates the Royal Observatory, the 17th-century Queen’s House, and the Cutty Sark.

The Museum has essential holdings in the history of Britain at sea comprising more than two million items.

The collection includes maritime art, cartography, manuscripts including official records, ship models and plans, scientific and navigational instruments, instruments for time-keeping, and astronomy.

Its holdings including paintings relating to Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson and Captain James Cook.

Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich

The Old Royal Naval College is a historical site considered to be the finest architectural and historical site in Britain.

The buildings were initially constructed to serve as the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, now generally known as Greenwich Hospital, which was designed by Christopher Wren, and built between 1696 and 1712.

The hospital closed in 1869. Between 1873 and 1998, it was the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Queen’s House, Greenwich

The Queen’s House is a former royal residence built between 1616 and 1635 in Greenwich, a few miles down-river from the then City of London.

Its architect was Inigo Jones, for whom it was an early commission, for Anne of Denmark, the queen of King James I.

The Queen’s House was the first classical building to have been constructed in England. It was Jones’s first significant commission after returning from his 1613–1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance, and Palladian architecture in Italy.

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich is situated on a hill in Greenwich Park, overlooking the River Thames.

It has played a significant role in the history of astronomy and navigation and is best known for the prime meridian passes through it, and thereby gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time.

The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, and Sir Christopher Wren chose the site.

Guildhall Art Gallery

The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the art collection of the City of London, England. The gallery was initially built in 1885 to house art collections from the City of London Corporation.

Today it occupies a building that was completed in 1999 to replace an earlier structure that was destroyed in The Blitz in 1941. It is a stone building in a semi-gothic style intended to be sympathetic to the historic Guildhall, which is adjacent.

The Guildhall Art Gallery collection consists of about 4,000 works, of which around 250 are on display at any one time. Many of the paintings are of London themes.

There is also a significant collection of Victorian-era art, including Pre-Raphaelites, which features paintings by artists such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Abraham Solomon, Edward John Poynter, and Edwin Landseer.

HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast was a cruiser built for the Royal Navy that is now permanently moored as a museum ship on the River Thames in London.

Belfast was the first ship in the Royal Navy to be named after the capital city of Northern Ireland, and one of ten Town-class cruisers began construction in 1936. She was commissioned in 1939 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Jewel Tower

The Jewel Tower is from the 14th-century and was part of the Royal Palace of Westminster, in London. It was built starting in 1365 to house the personal treasure of Edward III.

The tower is a three-story stone building which occupied a secluded part of the palace and was protected by a moat linked to the River Thames.

The tower continued to be used for the monarch’s treasure and personal possessions until 1512 when a fire in the Palace of Westminster caused Henry VIII to move his court to Whitehall.

Jewish Museum London

The Jewish Museum London is a museum of British Jewish life, history, and identity. The museum has dedicated to exploring Jewish history, culture, and heritage.

The museum was founded in 1932 and houses a collection of Jewish ceremonial art, and the museum’s Holocaust Gallery includes items and filmed survivor testimony.

The museum also has exhibitions recounting the history of Jewish life in England, supported by a diverse collection of objects. There are also collections of paintings, prints and drawings, and an archive of photographs.

Bank of England Museum

The Bank of England Museum is located within the Bank of England in the City of London. The museum displays a wide-ranging collection detailing the history of the Bank from its foundation in 1694 to the modern-day.

The displays include a representation of a late 18th-century office, known as the Stock Office, where holders of Bank stock would come to collect their dividends.

Exhibits cover the history of the bank in chronological order, including many images showing the history of the bank and its building.

London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum, based in Covent Garden, London, conserves and exhibits the transport heritage of Britain’s capital city.

The museum’s exhibits cover all aspects of transportation in the city. The museum operates from two sites within London.

The primary location in Covent Garden. The other site, located in Acton, is known as the London Transport Museum Depot and is principally a storage site that is open on regular visitor days throughout the year.

Museum of London

The Museum of London exhibits the history of London from prehistoric to modern times. Located on the London Wall, close to the Barbican Centre, it is part of the Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 1970s.

The museum has an extensive urban history collection with more than six million objects. It is primarily concerned with the social history of London and its inhabitants throughout its history.

Museum of London Docklands

The Museum of London Docklands tells the history of London’s River Thames and the growth of Docklands.

The museum is part of the Museum of London and opened in 2003 in an early-19th century Georgian “low” sugar warehouses built during1802 on the side of West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs, a short walk from the Canary Wharf development.

The building that houses the museum was initially called No.1 Warehouse and was built during the expansion of West India Docks.

National Army Museum, London

The National Army Museum is the British Army’s central museum. It is located adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the home of the “Chelsea Pensioners.”

The museum houses five galleries that cover British military history from the English Civil War up to modern-day.

The museum focuses on the overall history of British land forces, unlike other military museums in the United Kingdom, which concentrate on the history of individual corps and regiments of the British Army.

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology is part of the University College London Museums and Collections. The museum contains over 80,000 Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts.

The museum was established as a teaching resource for the Department of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College in 1892.

Professor, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, conducted many important excavations, and in 1913 he sold his collections of Egyptian antiquities to University College.

The College then creating the Flinders Petrie Collection of Egyptian Antiquities and transforming the museum into one of the leading collections outside Egypt.

Petrie excavated dozens of significant sites in Egypt, and his successors continued to add to the collections, excavating in other parts of Egypt and Sudan.

Royal Air Force Museum London

The Royal Air Force Museum London, also commonly known as the RAF Museum is located on the former Hendon Aerodrome.

It includes five buildings and hangars with close to 100 aircraft, showing the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force.

It is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, and there is another site at RAF Cosford in Shropshire. The Museum at Colindale was once part of the RAF Hendon station, and before that, one of the first civilian airfields.

In 1914, the aerodrome was requisitioned for Home Defense during the First World War. Hendon became a Royal Naval Air Station, training new pilots in the flying schools on site. Operations ceased after the end of the Great War.

Shakespeare’s Globe

Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theater, an Elizabethan playhouse associated with William Shakespeare.

The original theater was built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. The modern Globe Theater reconstruction is an approximation based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings.

Shakespeare’s Globe was built close to the site of the original theater and opened to the public in 1997. There is also an exhibition about Shakespeare’s life and work.

Sir John Soane’s Museum

The Sir John Soane’s Museum is a house museum that was formerly the home of the neo-classical architect John Soane. It holds drawings and models of Soane’s projects and his collections of paintings, drawings, and antiquities.

St Paul’s Cathedral

St Paul’s Cathedral, London, is an Anglican cathedral, which sits on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604.

The present cathedral, dates from the late 17th century, was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. Its construction was part of a major rebuilding program in the City after the Great Fire of London.

The cathedral is one of the most recognizable sights of London. Its dome, framed by the spires of the churches, dominated the skyline for over 300 years. It was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1967.

City of London Police Museum

The City of London Police Museum focuses on the history of the police force for the City of London, the financial center of the UK. It is ‘One Square Mile,’ but it has its police force, separate from the Metropolitan Police.

Exhibits include uniforms, Victorian-era police equipment, and artifacts, communication devices, World War II displays, and exhibits about Jack the Ripper and other famous murder cases.

Household Cavalry Museum

The Household Cavalry Museum is the museum of the Household Cavalry. Visitors can view the Household Cavalry horses in their 18th-century working stables.

The museum focuses on the training and history of the regiment. The afternoon inspection of the guards and horses happens daily at 4 pm.

This routine began in 1894 when Queen Victoria found the guards drinking and gambling in the afternoon instead of tending to their duty.

She proclaimed that they would be punished by a Four ‘O’ Clock inspection daily for the next 100 years. This proclamation and punishment officially expired in 1994, but Queen Elizabeth II chose to continue the inspection parade out of respect for tradition.

Museum of Freemasonry

The Household Cavalry Museum is the museum of the Household Cavalry. Visitors can view the Household Cavalry horses in their 18th-century working stables.

The museum focuses on the training and history of the regiment. The afternoon inspection of the guards and horses happens daily at 4 pm.

This routine began in 1894 when Queen Victoria found the guards drinking and gambling in the afternoon instead of tending to their duty.

She proclaimed that they would be punished by a Four ‘O’ Clock inspection daily for the next 100 years.

This proclamation and punishment officially expired in 1994, but Queen Elizabeth II chose to continue the inspection parade out of respect for tradition.

Tower Bridge, London

Tower Bridge is a combined drawbridge and suspension bridge in London built between 1886 and 1894. The bridge crosses the River Thames close to the Tower of London and has become an iconic symbol of London.

Tower Bridge is sometimes confused with the historically known London Bridge, situated some 0.5 mi (0.80 km) upstream.

The bridge consists of two bridge towers tied together at the upper level by two horizontal walkways, designed to withstand the horizontal tension forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward sides of the towers.

The two towers carry the vertical components of the forces in the suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways.

The drawbridge pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower.

Tower of London

The Tower of London is a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies at the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill.

It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078.

Wellcome Collection

The Wellcome Collection is a museum displaying a mixture of medical artifacts and original artworks exploring “ideas about the connections between medicine, life, and art.”

The museum offers contemporary and historic exhibitions and collections, the Wellcome Library, a café, and a bookshop.

The Wellcome Collection was founded by Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936). An enthusiastic traveler, Henry Wellcome, amassed a massive collection of books, paintings, and objects on the theme of the historical development of medicine worldwide.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is a large Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronations and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs.

The building itself was a Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539.

Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral. Since 1560, the building is no longer an abbey or a cathedral, having instead the status of a Church of England “Royal Peculiar,” a church responsible directly to the sovereign.

Edinburgh Museums

National Museum of Scotland

The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new “Museum of Scotland” and the “Royal Museum.”

The joint collections include Scottish antiquities, culture, and history, plus science and technology, natural history, and world cultures. The two connected buildings stand beside each other in central Edinburgh.

Glasgow Museums

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum armor in the West End of the city, on the banks of the River Kelvin. It is situated near the main campus of the University of Glasgow.

There is a myth in Glasgow that the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum building was accidentally built back-to-front. The grand entrance was always intended to face into Kelvingrove Park

Cardiff Museums

National Museum Cardiff

National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. It was founded in 1905, but owing to the First World War it did not open to the public until 1922, with the official opening taking place in 1927.

The museum has collections of botany, fine and applied art, geology, and zoology. Archaeology has been moved to the St Fagans National Museum of History.

The Clore Discovery Centre offers hands-on exploration of the museum’s 7.5 million items that are normally in storage, including insects, fossils, and Bronze Age weapons.

Liverpool Museums

Walker Art Gallery

The Walker Art Gallery houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group and is promoted as “the National Gallery of the North.”

The Walker’s collection includes European art from 1300 – 1900, 18th and 19th-century British art, including a significant collection of Victorian painting and many Pre-Raphaelite works, 20th-century works, and a considerable sculpture collection.

The collection of decorative arts covers a wide range, from Gothic ivories to British ceramics up to the present day.

Manchester Museums

Manchester Art Gallery

The Manchester Art Gallery houses many works of local and international significance and has a collection of more than 25,000 objects.

The gallery has an excellent art collection consisting of more than 2,000 oil paintings, 3,000 watercolors and drawings, 250 sculptures, 90 miniatures, and around 1,000 prints.

It owns many decorative art objects, including ceramics, glass, furniture, metalwork, arms, and armor.

Gallery Oldham

Gallery Oldham is an art gallery in the Cultural Quarter of central Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England.

With no permanent displays and four temporary galleries to fill, Gallery Oldham has an active exhibitions programs in the region. Exhibitions mix touring shows with work from the gallery’s collection of art, social history, and natural history.

The gallery holds work by local artists, and its collections include work by L. S. Lowry, John William Waterhouse, and Bridget Riley.

Bath Museums

Roman Baths (Bath)

The Roman Baths complex is a site of a well-preserved ancient Roman public bath and museum. The Roman Baths themselves are below the modern street level.

There are four main parts to the complex: the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple, the Roman Bath House, and the museum, holding finds from Roman Bath. The buildings above street level date from the 19th century.

Leeds Museums

Leeds Art Gallery

Leeds Art Gallery collection includes 19th-century and earlier artworks as well as 20th-century British Art. It is linked to Leeds Central Library and to the Henry Moore Institute, with which it shares some sculptures.

A Henry Moore sculpture, Reclining Woman: Elbow (1981), stands in front of the entrance.

In front of the gallery is Victoria Square, which is often used for rallies and demonstrations because of the speakers’ dais provided by the raised entrance to the gallery.

Newcastle upon Tyne Museums

Laing Art Gallery

A Henry Moore sculpture, Reclining Woman: Elbow (1981), stands in front of the entrance.

In front of the gallery is Victoria Square, which is often used for rallies and demonstrations because of the speakers’ dais provided by the raised entrance to the gallery.