Tacked on to the end of the Bank of England, this museum is housed in a replica Sir John Soane interior, the largest of its kind in the world. Read more.
This creaky old London home of the US politician and scientist focuses on the scientific discoveries he made while living here between 1757 and 1775. Read more.
Within the elegant confines of this red brick engine house is the tale of the design and construction of the Thames Tunnel, the oldest tunnel in London. Read more.
Chortle your way round this amusing little museum, which displays British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animations. Read more.
It’s easy to walk past the only surviving London house in which Dickens lived. You have to ring the doorbell to gain access to this unassuming townhouse. Read more.
It’s fitting that the man who had 300,000 people file past his coffin before his state funeral now has a museum dedicated to his life. Read more.
On the site of the notorious prison, this museum relays the history of Southwark as well as hosting some deeply unpleasant-looking torture devices. Read more.
Tiny local museum dedicated to the memory of the Crystal Palace exhibition centre. Read more.
Some 25,000 exhibits accumulated by two generations of the Cuming family in the 1800s, including objects from Ancient Egypt. Read more.
Opened in 1989, this riverside museum by Tower Bridge encompasses modern and contemporary industrial and fashion design, graphics, architecture and multimedia. Read more.
Although the museum takes up all four floors of the house in which Johnson wrote his 'Dictionary', it’s the atmosphere that intrigues here. Read more.
The world’s only museum dedicated to fans. It’s a tiny space consisting of two rooms with an overall collection of 3,500 antique fans, some of which date as far back as the eleventh century. Read more.
Founded by Zandra Rhodes, Bermondsey's very own celebration of the London (and international) rag trade. Read more.
An advocate of free healthcare, Florence Nightingale raised nursing to a professional level for women and started her own training school for nurses at St Thomas'. Read more.
Housed in two buildings at the Royal Artillery’s base abutting the Thames, the museum covers the history of guns and gunpowder from Ancient China to contemporary Iraq. Read more.
A beautiful Hampstead house and the great psychoanalyst’s home after he fled Austria, the Freud Museum is not only preserved as it was when Sigmund died, but as it was in Austria when he fled in 1938. Read more.
Named after former Lord Mayor Sir Robert Geffrye, it’s possibly the city’s most stylish museum, boasting a fine restaurant and an art exhibition space in the basement Read more.
The Guards Museum tells the story of the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards and Welsh Guards. Read more.
Seemingly removed from the modern world, Handel House offers much to soothe and inspire for lovers of Georgian architecture, interiors and portrait painting. Read more.
A 25-foot Alaskan totem pole outside the main entrance gives a clue as to what’s in here: a wealth of quirky anthropological and natural history treasures. Read more.
Wandering among this collection of thousands of medical specimens and cases of surgical instruments is fascinating. Read more.
For genuine steam enthusiasts this museum hosts Cornish engines (in their original engine housings) and rotative engines (collected from pumping stations around the country). Read more.
The London Canal Museum is housed in a former nineteenth-century ice warehouse used by Carlo Gatti for his famous ice cream, and it includes an exhibit on the history of the ice trade and ice cream. Read more.
This is three museums in one: the history of St John’s Gate, a commemoration of the Order of St John, and an interactive display on the Order’s modern incarnation – the St John’s Ambulance. Read more.
Housed in a historic warehouse, this excellent museum is devoted to the river and the docks. Read more.
This 120-year history of consumerism, culture, design, domestic life, fashion, folly and fate, presented as a magnificently cluttered time tunnel of cartons and bottles, toys and advertising displays. Read more.
The history of London told through reconstructed interiors and street scenes, alongside displays of original artefacts found during the museum's archaeological digs. Read more.
You can almost smell embrocation in the air as you wander round this evocative and interactive collection of oval-ball artefacts and memorabilia. Read more.
Predictably, weapons feature prominently in here: the 2,500 edged weapons, 200 pole arms and 1,850 firearms should keep bloodthirsty teenagers interested. Read more.
With its 80,000 exhibits, the Petrie (pronounced pee-tree) is bursting at its seams with items from the Nile valley dating back 5,000 years. Read more.
The last word in factional conceit, 221b’s study is a loving Victorian recreation and a splendid photo op. Read more.
You’ll never forget your first visit to the home of architect Sir John Soane. It’s stuffed with curios and is almost exactly as Soane left it when he died in 1837. Read more.
Built 1756-66 for the first Earl Spencer (one of Diana’s ancestors), Spencer House is London’s finest surviving eighteenth-century private palace. Read more.
This enjoyably interactive museum surveys tennis throughout the world from its medieval beginnings. Read more.
