Museum Of London

The Museum of London is a museum in London, covering the history of the UK's capital city from prehistoric to modern times. It was formed in 1976 by amalgamating collections previously held by the City Corporation at the Guildhall Museum (founded in 1826) and of the London Museum (founded in 1912). From 1976 to 4 December 2022 its main site was located in the City of London on the London Wall, close to the Barbican Centre, as part of the Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 1970s to redevelop a bomb-damaged area of the city. The museum has the largest urban history collection in the world, with more than six million objects.

That site was a few minutes' walk north of St Paul's Cathedral, overlooking the remains of the Roman city wall and on the edge of the oldest part of London, now its main financial district. It is primarily concerned with the social history of London and its inhabitants throughout time. The museum is jointly controlled and funded by the City of London Corporation and the Greater London Authority. In March 2015, the museum revealed plans to move to the General Market Building at the nearby Smithfield site. Reasons for the proposed move included the claim that the current site was difficult for visitors to find, and that by expanding, from 17,000 square metres to 27,000, a greater proportion of the Museum's collection could be placed on display. The cost of the move was estimated to be in the region of £70 million and, if funding could be achieved, the estimated completion date was 2021.

It was later discovered that the building project would be more complex than first thought, and the deadline for opening was pushed back to 2024. The move is contingent upon raising an estimated £70 million, with Museum of London Docklands remaining open in the interim. Early in 2022, it was announced that the museum would close on its existing site at the end of that year and reopen in 2026 at Smithfield Market as the London Museum. Plans for the vacated Barbican site include the Centre for Music, a permanent home for the London Symphony Orchestra.

1976-2022

The amalgamation of the two collections was agreed in 1964. The Museum of London Act, allowing for the merger, was passed in the following year. The museum was opened in December 1976 as part of the Barbican Estate. The architects were Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, who adopted an innovative approach to museum design, whereby the galleries were laid out so that there was only one route through the museum – from the prehistoric period to the modern galleries. The museum's displays there comprised a series of chronological galleries containing original artefacts, models, pictures and diagrams, with a strong emphasis on archaeological discoveries, the built city, urban development and London's social and cultural life, with interactive displays and activities for all ages. Fragments of the Roman London Wall could be seen just outside the museum.

A £20 million redevelopment was completed in May 2010, its biggest investment since opening in 1976. The re-design, by London-based architects Wilkinson Eyre, told the story of London and Londoners chronologically from the Great Fire of 1666 to the present day. The transformation included four new galleries, including the new City Gallery featuring large street level windows along London Wall and providing an illuminated showcase for the Lord Mayor's State Coach, which takes to the streets each November for the Lord Mayor's Show. The Galleries of Modern London increased the museum's exhibition space by 25 percent and enabled the display of 7,000 objects. Star exhibits included a reconstruction of Georgian pleasure gardens, the foreboding wooden interior of the Wellclose debtors' prison cell, an art deco lift from Selfridges department store and the puppet stars of BBC
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