Very interesting - see the old operating theatre, diseased lungs and brains in jars, crazy medical…read moreimplements. Definitely insightful. To get into the place you have to climb up a very steep, claustrophobic winding staircase which would be impossible for some people.

I love, and I mean LOVE, a medical history museum! Because…read morefolks...they aren't all well-known, but they aren't unusual to find. And you should definitely seek one out, if there is one in a city you are visiting. They tend to be small, but also the most interactive types of educational museums spaces. The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret is not open everyday (unlike what Yelp says), which makes sense for the size and type of place. Despite it's location near Borough Market and the large London Bridge metro station, it seems it is small enough...far enough off the main drag...and with the smallest little sign indicating it's location...that it has weekend-only hours. Sort of....long weekend....Thursday - Sunday 10:30am -5pm. These are the days and hours as they appear on google AND the museum's own website. So be aware. The actual museum is in the attic of the building that houses it, and requires an ability to go up several stories worth of a very narrow spiral staircase. It is not accessible, and there are no toilet facilities on site. So be aware. I appreciate the stair-traffic-control they do, with alternating red and green lights on the top and bottom so you know when you can go in whatever direction without a mid-spiral traffic jam. Upon paying for entrance, you get a scratch card with a person's illustration on it, and you scratch off a series of information bits as you go through the museum and see their icon. Love it! And there are different ones, so if you have a couple people in a group, you'll learn about different people! There is a children's area with coloring pages and interactive parts... It is all really just....so cool. You should go and experience it, if you have the physical capacity to get yourself to the entrance. I don't want to spill too much of what you will see there....but loads of history along with historical medical instruments, an operating theater, and other various medical-adjacent and old time-y pharmaceutical-y things...it's...fantastic. Well worth your time and money and some fun souvenirs, should you be in to that as well. Highly recommend!

Big! Giant! Huge Collection! I think that describes this museum. Be prepared to spend at least half…read moreday here. For fast pace like me, it takes us 3 hours. This museum need reservations ahead of time. It is free to public. The museum is popular, if you try to get in at the day arrive, you have to hope not many reserve the ticket. The museum has a lot room with different regions in the world. Many of the collection even the host country doesn't have it. The Egypt collection includes the many types of mummies. This collection not even the Egypt has it. The entrance basically enter to the round section that connected to the different room. You may need a good leg to walk entire museum. They also have folding chairs that you can use and portable to open at the display.

It's not every museum that has a line wrapped around the building when it opens on a Monday…read moremorning. But the British Museum is the world's oldest public national museum, has the largest collection of artifacts of any museum in the world, and is the second most visited attraction in all of the United Kingdom. The museum is free to visit, but we reserved a timed entry ticket for when they opened on Monday morning. I suggest you do this, because people who had tickets were walking right through into the museum after a bag check, while people who had not bought tickets ahead of time were having to wait in another line to get in. The museum is so large and has so many artifacts, that it can be a little overwhelming. For that reason, we relied on the list of highlights of the museum to point us to certain artifacts we didn't want to miss: the Rosetta Stone; the colossal bust of Ramesses II (c. 1250 BC); Hoa Hakananai'a (basalt statue from Easter Island); the Ife head (Nigeria, ca. 1300-1400s); the Sutton Hoo ship burial (dating back to 7th century Britain); the Lewish Chessmen (Scottish, ca. 1150-1175); and more. Prepare for crowds and to be a little overwhelmed by people and artifacts and the size of the museum. If you want to see everything, be prepared to spend an entire in the museum. Since it's free, you can do as we did and just spend a couple of hours - that's all we had - and see what you can see (the highlights list helped)! But it's a great museum and easily one of the most important museums in the country.

Marvelous place, the Tate Modern, though unfortunately my children did not see the appeal…read more I had fond memories of our first visit, back in 2010, and wanted to peek into the Tate during a family outing along South Bank last month. I love London's free museums, which make this sort of perfunctory drop-in both easy and practical. Our kids didn't like the Musée d'Orsay, so we didn't have high hopes for the Tate, especially after a long walk from the London Eye. We'd barely gotten them up the escalators and into one of the exhibit halls when they started saying they wanted to leave. We admired what we could of the heavy-hitting collection. We also talked to our children about some of the art, and maybe a trickle of it got through. There was a still life I loved, that turned out to be a Picasso, and a Mondrian painting I'm pretty sure I learned about in first or second grade. Our six-year-old volunteered that he liked a still life of a beer mug by Fernand Léger, and both kids were drawn, just a little, to Warhol's Marilyn Diptych. I hope the boys remember this quick visit, but if not, I certainly will. Maybe I'll bring them back when they're older, and we can give the Tate the time it deserves.

I visited the Tate Modern for the first time earlier this month when I visited London for a few…read moredays with my husband. The Tate opened in 2000, but a new building opened in 2016. The museum is located in the former Bankside Power Station, and the museum's Turbine Hall is an incredibly large and open space (but I did wonder why they don't utilize the space to display any large sculptures since it's such an enormous and unused space). It's a striking space, it's one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. It's free to visit, but exhibits may have a cost unless you're a member of the museum. When we visited earlier this month, they had three exhibits: Frida: the Making of an Icon (though January 3, 2027); Ana Mendieta (through January 17, 2027); and Julio Le Parc: Light. Color. Action (through May 3, 2027). The Frida exhibit costs 25 pounds, the Mendieta 18 pounds, and the Le Parc 15 pounds. That means that if you wanted to visit all three exhibits, it would cost 58 pounds a person which is, I think, outrageous. I couldn't justify spending that much, so I picked one exhibit - the Frida exhibit - and then just explored the free galleries after our visit to the exhibit. The Frida exhibit (which was organized in collaboration was the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) was interesting. I've been lucky enough to see much of Frida Kahlo's works before in Mexico and Texas. But the exhibit included many works I had never seen before, and it also included works by artists that were friends or contemporaries of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and works by artists that were inspired by her. The inclusion of "Fridamania," the transformation of Kahlo into an icon, image, brand, made the exhibit different from other Frida exhibits I've seen. The exhibit was extremely crowded - but you have to expect that with an exhibit like this! I found the museum a little confusing to navigate, but we just wandered for the time that we had. Some of the works that really struck me were pieces by Gerhard Richter (the Cage paintings), Belkis Ayón, Sam Nhlengethwa, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Alberto Giacometti, David Hockney, Salman Toor, Mark Rothko, and more. The museum is definitely worth visiting, but I just didn't love it as much as I expected. Since it's free, I'm sure I'll be back to explore more of the permanent collection another time, but I did find it a little difficult to navigate and thought the exhibition admission prices were prohibitively expensive.

A solid 4 stars for people visiting just past Tower Bridge. They have a student discount and change…read moreexhibitions (only 1 on display at a time) every few months. The next one will be in mid June. Time arrived: a 3pm visit after we had just swung in from Maltby St Market. We arrived at a splash of color and a huge display introducing the works of Mary Quaint and the change in fashion post-WWII. Exhibition itself: The clothing and mixes of color were well met with an interesting straight forward walking path, but full of turns and different designs with each corner. I think the changes of color, textures, fabrics and overall variation and creativity of space usage was excellent. Tips/Takeaways: -Mary Quaint exhibition through early June 2019, next one mid June 2019 -Student discounts available -A fun 1h visit roughly to see the whole exhibit. Fun if you happen across Maltby St Market on a Sunday afternoon.

I came here for the opening night party for the retrospective exhibition of Foale and Tuffin, the…read more1960s fashion designers. The split level venue was packed with champagne-swilling revelers. I saw Paul Smith and, regrettably, did not stroll over to say hello. Yes, I would have been that horrible American who would've asked if we could take a picture together but before I could, he was gone. And he was such a dashing silver fox too. . . Don't miss this Bermondsey Street museum's gift shop - in it you'll find a collection of unique jewelery, handbags and books. I'm still thinking about the clutch I didn't purchase!

I waited for a while to write this review as I wanted to parse this experience a little more in my…read moremind. In general, this place was reasonably well designed to tell the Jack the Ripper saga at a level for the casual observer. In other words, for those who want to learn the historical significance of the events on a basic level, it was perfect. I was afraid that it might be overly gimmicky and touristy. And there was some dramatic effect pervasive in the audio guide (extra cost), but it was not overdone. While the museum is housed in the Whitechapel neighborhood where the murders occurred, the structure itself has no documented connection to any of the homicides or murder suspects. The museum is well chosen, however, as it features five floors where they stage scenes relevant to the telling of the Ripper saga. The ground floor was informational, while the next level was set up as one of the first murder scenes where a victim was found. The second floor (third level) was staged as the apartment of one of the prime suspects Walter Sickert. There were actually a period overcoat and derby in that room to try on for a photo op. The third floor was set up to be a likeness of the police station with actual police artifacts from the investigator who was working the case. The top floor was constructed as a shanty apartment from one of the last victims. The basement (last in the tour on the recommended sequence) was a scene from the Ten Bells Tavern which seemed to be a seminal hunting location for the Ripper. The museum was well presented and the audio guide and displays presented the right amount of drama to tell the story without crossing the "hype" border. If you want to leave out most of the drama, you could forgo the audio guide. I thought it was a nice added dimension. But the artifacts and the signage by themselves give a very good basic history of the events associated with the Ripper. The backgrounds of the victims were quite interesting. Likewise fascinating were the identities and backgrounds of the lineup of suspects that had been pegged as possible culprits by various contemporaries as well as scholars and JtR buffs since that time. What particularly interested me was the status of Whitechapel within London's social environment at that time. It was clearly very different from the current standing of the community, which has really only changed in the past 20 or 30 years from what I could glean. This area was clearly rife to present opportunities for a psychopath like the Ripper to find his victims. These unfortunate women were victimized first by society and by their own poor choices before becoming ultimate victims for the Ripper. It was an intriguing dive into London's social history. Because of the iconic and enduring nature of the mystery behind these killings and its inextricable tie to the City of London, this museum is probably worth seeing if you have the time (and I emphasize the word "IF"). Given the number of worthwhile sights in London, I'd be hard pressed to urge most people to prioritize it. This was my fifth or sixth trip to London, and the third in which I've had my wife with me, so we were in a situation where we were on second tier sights, making this one easier to prioritize. We were also staying in Shoreditch. Hence, the proximity was working in our favor as the museum was walkable. On the other hand, if you are a crime buff or a mystery buff in addition to being interested in social and cultural history, you might elevate this sight to a must-see. It is done well enough to be both entertaining and informative.

I didn't take a lot of pictures of this great little museum because that would ruin it for those…read morewho like these types of places. Nice little souvenirs to take home. Museum takes you through the whole Jack the Ripper murders. Mind you it is a three story museum and more information in the basement. Lots to look at, and it brings you closer to what happened.

The Tower of London was founded in 1066 due to the Norman Conquest of England. The Duke of…read moreNormandy, William the Conqueror, had amassed thousands of troops and hundreds of ships and landed in southern England. In October 1066, the reigning Harold II died during the Battle of Hastings and was succeeded by William the Conqueror as king. A series of further victories had cut London's supply lines, and its leaders had surrendered the city. William then initiated an extensive program to fortify the city, which included the construction of the Tower of London in 1066. From then, the Tower had continued to play a significant role in England's regal history. For centuries, monarchs would begin processions at the Tower to Westminster Abbey for their coronations. However, during the Tudor period, the Tower declined in its use as a royal residence. The castle would also serve as a prison for those considered politically undesirable. Under the order of King Henry VIII, the execution of Anne Boleyn occurred at the Tower in 1536. Her daughter, Elizabeth I, was also imprisoned there before she became queen under the order of Queen Mary I. Today, the Tower of London is a popular tourist attraction in the country. Its proximity to Tower Bridge and other attractions along the Circle and District Underground lines help in bringing in many visitors. There is no need to purchase admission if one is walking beside it to view its walls. Fortunately, there are outdoor signs available to learn a little about the history of what you're looking at.

When I visited London earlier this month, it was the first I'd been in London for almost 20 years…read more I don't remember if I went to the Tower of London when I was in London in 2007, but I do remember that I went on my very first trip to London when I was a little girl. I was heavily into my King Henry VIII phase then, and I wanted to see the site where two of his queens lost their lives. Visiting as an adult was interesting. Some things I remembered and some things I didn't. There's no question that this is an incredibly historic site. The site dates back to 1066, and then William the Conqueror built his castle, the White Tower, in 1078. Then the site was expanded by the kings that followed. The purpose of the site changed over the centuries: armory, treasury, menagerie, Royal Mint, public record office, home of the Crown Jewels... For a few centuries, it was the place the next king would spend a few nights leading up to their coronation. And under the Tudors, it became what I knew it as when I was in my Tudor history phase - a prison. Guy Fawkes was tortured at the Tower in 1605. Anne Boleyn was held and executed at the Tower in 1536. Henry VIII's fifth wife was executed at the Tower in 1542. Lady Jane Grey was executed at the Tower in 1554. Queen Mary I imprisoned her sister Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth I, in the Tower for two months in 1554. It's a large site with several different buildings that explain and cover different eras and aspects of the Tower's history. Although I suspect the Crown Jewels are the highlight of many people's visit to the Tower, I really enjoyed and learned the most from the Medieval Palace (which has been preserved/reconstructed to demonstrate the palace where Henry III, Edward I, Eleanor of Provence, and Eleanor of Castile lived); the Chapel Royal of St Peter and Vincula (the final resting place of many prominent prisoners who were executed at the Tower); the Tower Hill Execution Memorial; the Bloody Tower (the tower tied to the imprisonment and disappearance of two young princes in 1483 and Sir Walter Raleigh); St John's Chapel inside the White Tower; and the Tower's ravens (legend says that the kingdom will fall if the resident ravens ever leave the Tower). It's a large property, and the map they provide is pretty terrible. So we just wandered and wandered. You need some time to do this, because there are towers and nooks and crannies - and every little corner of the property has something to teach visitors. I might be a little past my Tudor phase, but a visit to the Tower of London can still thrill this history nerd. A must include on an itinerary for a trip to London.

The London Film Museum is essentially the James Bond Museum, with the "Bond in Motion" exhibits…read moreoccupying the vast majority of the space. It is a rather small museum though, and even if you take the time to look at every detail, one to two hours will be more than enough. The main exhibits are the hot cars that 007 gets to drive, as well as a few other cool surprises - remember the car that turned into a submarine when it hit the water (The Spy Who Loved Me)? Or the plane with folded wings that emerged from a trailer (Octopussy)? Many of those exhibits include detailed specifications as well as videos of the scenes that highlight the vehicles. Some exhibits also play the theme songs in the background. Other memorabilia that Bond fans would love include original costumes, props, photo of backstage scenes, theatrical posters, etc. Admission is GBP14.50 (about USD18), which is rather expensive for such a small place (hence only 4 stars). But Bond fans, don't you dare say it's too expensive so you'll never go. Never Say Never Again! You Only Live Twice! You can go tomorrow since Tomorrow Never Dies. Go see it with your own Golden Eye. After all, this museum is For Your Eyes Only...

007 fans, you do NOT want to miss this!! This was only ever meant to be a temporary museum, but was…read moreso successful, they've opened it indefinitely. What you'll find in here is gold if you're a Bond fan; from the first ever original car insurance deal for filming, props used in the films like passports, keys, money to a range of vehicles used throughout all the films - it's well worth the money. Here's a tip - buying tickets online is actually more expensive than in person, only by a couple of pounds, but when there's six of you going, that's 6 coffees I could buy at Pret a Manger around the corner!!!! Keep your change, and buy when you get there.

I really enjoyed my walking tour with Geebs. She turned it into a game, got everyone involved, It…read morewas so much more fun than I expected. I got to learn stuff I didn't know about Harry Potter, and some history of London. The length of the tour was perfect. We had a great sized group to make it a fun game. Geebs was also very helpful in telling people where they could grab dinner or get a taxi when the tour was finished. She also took great photos of everyone in front of a cathedral. Geebs is a very talented person in many aspects. I wish I could go on another tour with her

Alex was great. The Harry Potter facts along with historical facts and nuance were greatread more

I had been seeing signs and flyers for this all over London and being a super fan of all things…read morehorror, I knew I had to go. The first part was a dramatic story telling in a few different rooms. The rooms were hot so be prepared. The actors talk about all the gory details of what happened down there and it was definitely entertaining. The second part is the horror walkthrough. If you are easily scared, they do give you an option to leave at that point. The walkthrough is tight. They have you put your hands on the person in front of you (conga line style) which was weird at first but it wound up being fun. It's deff like a maze down there and we ended up in a dead end a few different times but it was still a fun time and a bit creepy but I would have loved some more pop outs. Overall it's a fun time if you're looking for something to do!

Hmmmm. On paper this sounds like a fascinating tour, and the doorway entry seems very inviting…read more We're offered a dramatic interpretation of the violent and colorful past of the London Bridge. The first half of the tour took our group through various times in history, meeting characters who freely shared the gory details of their life on the bridge. The second half is a spooky maze, with no historical context. It's walking through spiderwebs, near pitch black areas with the occasional spirit jumping out to startle us... all while requiring us to keep our hands on the shoulders of the guest in front of us... like a paranoid conga line. Overall more sideshow, than show. We were so strapped for time, I wish we had skipped this attraction to spend more time at any number of other historical sights including the very close Tower Bridge.