London Museum

The London Museum opens its doors at Smithfield General Market on Saturday 28 November, after years of work on its new home. It's the same institution we've known as the Museum of London, renamed in 2024, and it's billed as the world's largest city museum, drawing on 450,000 years of history from a collection of around seven million objects. The new site is the restored Victorian General Market, which opened in 1883 and was designed by Sir Horace Jones — the same architect behind Tower Bridge and Leadenhall Market. It's been shuttered since the 1990s, so this is the first time it's been open to the public in decades.

The galleries are laid out in three parts: Real Time, Our Time, and the subterranean Past Time. One of the more unusual features is a six-metre window that lets you watch Thameslink trains rumble through the room while you're inside. The whole thing is run as a 'green museum', with rainwater-powered toilets, geothermal energy and an eco-concrete mix, aiming for a BREEAM 'Outstanding' rating. The neighbouring Poultry Market is due to follow in 2028.

Opening with it is the inaugural programme, London Tastes, which runs from November 2026 through to August 2027. It's co-curated by Ruby Tandoh and Jonathan Nunn and sponsored by Sainsbury's. The project itself cost £437 million and was delivered by architects Stanton Williams and Asif Khan, with conservation architect Julian Harrap, in partnership with the City of London Corporation and Mayor Sadiq Khan, with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths' Foundation, The Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

General admission is free, so you can head in without spending a penny. The museum is at Smithfield's General Market, West Smithfield, London EC1A 9AG, and opens on 28 November.