London itineraries and some free activities

London has four monuments declared World Heritage sites: the Palace of Westminster, the Tower of London, the complex and park in Greenwich National Maritime Museum and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
London has 238 attractions free entry include exhibitions hosted by the British Museum and the sites at Kenwood House or the works of artists such as Rembrandt, Reynolds and Turner, or Hackney City Farm for children.
They include the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum or the Museum of Science, in addition to the permanent exhibitions of London best known show, the vanguardism. The 'interaction' is "the most", bringing together history and culture with real life.

The most typical sites of the capital are the London Eye, the tallest panoramic Ferris wheel in the world, or the Madame Tussauds wax museum, but there are also lesser-known alternative and equally interesting, as Kensington Palace, Dali Universe, a permanent exhibition plasma surrealism of the most unknown great artist, or the photo gallery Photographers' Gallery.

Some of the best museums in London, the Tate Modern, the Saatchi Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts and National Portrait Gallery opening hours are offered on Friday and Saturday night. Sites such as the cinema hall BFI London IMAX Cinema, the Dali Universe and the Geffrye Museum give special concern for people with special needs.

30% of London is covered with greenery. London has 143 registered parks and gardens such as Hampstead Heath and Mile End Park.

The principal attractions of London are: the Tower of London, the Houses of the Parliament with his. Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Abbey Road, the Abbey of Westminster, Parliament Square, Tower Bridge, Hyde Park, Regent's Park, The Mall, Buckingham's Palace, the Cathedral of San Paul, Piccadilly Circus, or Windsor's Castle.

Tate Modern!

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Tate Modern!

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Natural History Museum

The exciting experience of this museum begins after entering, on having seen the precious hall presided by the skeleton of an enormous Diplodocus besides a Mastodon found in Tagua Tagua's Lagoon, Chile.

It was constructed between 1873 and 1880 to shelter the increasing collection of skeletons, plants and fossils that were constituting a section of the British Museum. Legally the museum of natural history remained as part of the British Museum until 1963. In 1986 it absorbed the nearby geological Museum acquiring The Natural's official name History Museum.

The classic style of the decoration takes us behind in the time and seems that we are going to cross with English gentlemen with bowler hat.

The museum divides principally in five areas: Botany, zoology, entomology (insects), mineralogy and paleontology. It (he, she) possesses a varied collection with more than 70 million specimens and objects in exhibition.

The most famous zone is the zone of paleontology, a very pleasant tour full of skeletons of dinosaur of the most diverse heights and types. The visit to this part ends in a room in which there is a great articulated tiranosaurio that creates realistic enough effects.

Of the rest of zones stands out the enormous collection of dissected animals that shape the zone of zoology and entomology. Considered one of the major collections of the world of animal specimens, stand out especially those t

hat were donated by Darwin to the museum.

Impressive they are also the rooms dedicated to the minerals, with spectacular collections of precious stones.

General Information:

The entry is free to the general exhibition.

It opens every day of 10.00 - 17.50. The museum is in Exhibition Road, in Kensington. The most nearby stop of meter is South Kensington

, to which Circle and Piccadilly comes near with the lines District.

The buses that stop nearby are 14, 49, 70, 74, 345, 360, 414 and C1.

Pieces of advice:

- The museum is thought to a great extent for children so families will not have problems to move. There are all kinds of services like restaurants, zones of picnic, and elevators for carts...

- After coming, after going through the con

trols of entry (you will have to show the content of bags that you take) look for a plane of the museum to know where everything is.

- The museum of Natural History is stuck to the museum of Sciences, so consider visiting both. Though they are enormous and you might spend days in each of them, for a general glimpse it is sufficient to use hour and a half for each one.

- The own building of the museum makes the visit both externally and in the inside worthwhile.

- Harrods is 10 minutes on foot, is not a bad idea to programme one evening combined of purchases and culture visiting the museums and shopping at Knightsbridge.

- The museum shop is very interesting.

The museum is divided in four zones:

- Red zone: the marvels of our planet with the volcanoes, the earthquakes and our giant model of the Earth.

- Green zone: to investigate the ecology of the Earth. Dodo knows one. To explore the magnificent central Hall including Charles Darwin's statue and our new roof tree installation.

- Blue zone: the experience of the age of the dinosaurs. Discover a world of big mammals, the blue whale, and learn on the human body.

- Orange zone: it explores Vida Silvestre's Garden and the new Darwin Center

National Gallery

The museum is in Trafalgar Square.

It’s the principal art museum of London. The National Gallery has turned in a gallery of art of international name from his foundation into 1824. It was shaped principally by his first directors, included the painter Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and increased by private donations, which nowadays compose two thirds of his permanent collection. It is more reduced in comparison with the Louvre. There are more than 2300 paintings since 1250. It is only necessary to pay the entry for certain exhibitions. The entry of the museum is free.

It’s considered one of the museum whit the highest variety and quality. Here we can just find paintings. There are a lot of private collections. The most important Italian artist are: Piero della Francesca, Rafael and Tiziano. Spanish paintings number is reduced but there are fundamental pieces.

The National Gallery has been lodged in three different buildings. The current building was begun by William Wilkins. From 2002 until 2006, the director of this institution has been Charles Saumarez Smith. From December, 2007, the direction of the Gallery is at the expense of the prestigious historian of the Art, Nicholas Penny.

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In this museum we have:

• Easy access for disabled persons.
  
• The best collection of art in the world.
  
• Visits every days.
  
• Audio guides.
  
• Restaurants and coffees.
  
• And other commune installation.

Imperial War

Imperial War Museum London

Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom

Email: General enquiries: mail@iwm.org.uk

General enquiries: +44 (0)20 7416 5000

Fax: +44 (0)207 416 5374

Contact details for IWM
Collections: see Collections

Opening times:

It opens daily (except 24, 25 and 26 December) 10.00am - 6.00pm

Admission:

FREE (NB: special exhibitions may charge an admission fee)

Museum Guidebook

you can now purchase a copy of our Museum Guidebook from our Online Shop

TOURIST INFORMATION

Attractions close to Imperial War Museum.

The London Eye

This is on the South Bank of the Thames. If you want to have a nice view, don’t doubt to get on.

The Houses of Parliament

The Houses of Parliament is on The North Bank of Thames at Westminster.

Florence Nightingale Museum

Florence Nightingale was the person who developed modern nursing. In this museum there is information about her life and work. You can find interesting information.

South Bank Centre

The South Bank Centre comprises The Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery. It shares the site with the independently managed National Theatre, the National Film Theatre and the British Film Institute.

National Theatre

In the National Theatre you can find spectacular musicals, new plays for all the family. There are three theatres housed by The National: the Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Cottesloe, all together under one roof.

Tate Britain

The national gallery of British art from 1500 to 2004. It includes the Turner Gallery.

Tate Modern

Tate Modern, housed in a spectacular former power station, is home the Tate's collection of modern and contemporary art.

Museum of Garden History

In this museum you can find the story of the history of gardening and the work of celebrated gardeners. There’s an important gardener family: the Tradescant (they were the gardeners of Charles I and Charles II)

BRITISH MUSEUM

Getting Here

By Underground
The nearest underground stations to the Museum are:

Holborn (approximately 7 minutes on foot)
Tottenham Court Road (approx. 6 minutes on foot)
Russell Square (approx. 10 minutes on foot)
Goodge Street (approx. 13 minutes on foot)

By bus
The following buses stop near the Museum

1, 7, 8, 19, 25, 38, 55, 98, 242
Stop on New Oxford Street
10, 14, 24, 29, 73, 134, 390Stop on Tottenham Court Road,
northbound and Gower Street, southbound
59, 68, X68, 91, 168, 188Stop on Southampton Row

The British Museum is free to all:

The Museum is open every day 10.00–17.30
Open late Thursdays and Fridays
The British Museum is free to all visitors. A charge may be made for some special exhibitions.

Information Desk
+44 (0)20 7323 8299- For general information about the Museum
Collections enquiries
+44 (0)20 7323 8838- For questions about the Museum collection
Ticket Desk
+44 (0)20 7323 8181- For exhibition and eventticket booking
Switchboard
+44 (0)20 7323 8000- For all other enquiries

MAPS:
-Ground floor:

Americas
North America (Room 26) The JP Morgan Chase Gallery
Mexico (Room 27)

Ancient Egypt
Egyptian sculpture (Room 4)
Ancient Greece and Rome
Greece: Cycladic Islands (Room 11)
Greece: Minoans and Mycenaeans (Room 12) The Arthur I Fleischman Gallery
Greece 1050-520 BC (Room 13)
Greek vases (Room 14)
Athens and Lycia (Room 15)
Greece: Bassae Sculptures (Room 16)
Nereid Monument (Room 17)
Greece: Parthenon (Room 18)
Greece: Athens (Room 19)
Greeks and Lycians 400- 325 BC (Room 20)
Mausoleum of Halikarnassos (Room 21)
The world of Alexander (Room 22)
Greek and Roman sculpture (Room 23)

Asia
China, India, South Asia and Southeast Asia (Room 33) The Joseph E Hotung Gallery
India: Amaravati (Room 33a) The Asahi Shimbun Gallery
Chinese jade (Room 33b) The Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery
Korea (Room 67) The Korea Foundation Gallery

Middle East
Assyrian sculpture and Balawat Gates (Room 6)
Assyria: Nimrud (Room 7-8)
Assyria: Nineveh (Room 9)
Assyria: Lion hunts, Siege of Lachish and Khorsabad (Room 10)
The Islamic world (Room 34) The John Addis Gallery

Themes
Enlightenment (Room 1)
Living and Dying (Room 24) The Wellcome Trust Gallery
Exhibitions and changing displays
Changing Museum (Room 2)
Special exhibitions (Room 3)
Reading Room

-Lower floor:

Africa
Africa (Room 25) The Sainsbury Galleries

Ancient Greece and Rome
Greek and Roman architecture (Room 77)
Classical inscriptions (Room 78)
Early Ephesus (Room 82) The Wolfson Gallery — Gallery currently closed
Roman sculpture (Room 83-4) The Wolfson Galleries — Gallery currently closed
Roman portraits (Room 85) The Wolfson Gallery — Gallery currently closed

Clore Education Centre
Hugh and Catherine Stevenson Lecture Theatre
Claus Moser Room
BP Lecture Theatre
The Studio
Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms
Samsung Digital Discovery Centre

-Upper floor:

Ancient Egypt
The tomb-chapel of Nebamun: Ancient Egyptian life and death (Room 61) The Michael Cohen Gallery
Egyptian death and afterlife:mummies (Room 62-3) The Roxie Walker Galleries
Early Egypt (Room 64) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Egypt and Nubia (Room 65) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Ethiopia and Coptic Egypt (Room 66)

Ancient Greece and Rome
Greek and Roman life (Room 69)
Roman Empire (Room 70) The Wolfson Gallery
Etruscan world (Room 71)
Ancient Cyprus (Room 72) The A G Leventis Gallery
Greeks in Italy (Room 73)

Asia
Japan (Rooms 92-94)

Europe
Medieval Europe (Room 40) The Paul and Jill Ruddock Gallery
Europe AD 300–1100 (Room 41)
The Waddesdon Bequest (Room 45)
Europe 1400–1800 (Room 46)
Europe 1800–1900 (Room 47)
Europe 1900 to the present (Room 48)
Roman Britain (Room 49) The Weston Gallery
Britain and Europe 800 BC–AD 43 (Room 50)
Ancient Europe 4000-800 BC (Room 51)

Middle East
Ancient Iran (Room 52) The Rahim Irvani Gallery
Ancient South Arabia (Room 53) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Ancient Turkey (Room 54) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Mesopotamia 1500–539 BC (Room 55) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Mesopotamia 6000–1500 BC (Room 56) The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery
Ancient Levant (Room 57-69)

Themes
Clocks and watches (Room 38-9) The Sir Harry and Lady Djanogly Gallery
Money (Room 68) The HSBC Gallery

Exhibitions and changing displays
Prints and drawings (Room 90)
Special exhibition (Room 91)
Special exhibition (Room 69a)

Court Restaurant
Upper floor, Great Court
Top quality cuisine from around the world in the Museum’s magnificent Great Court.
Teahouse
11.00-15.00
Lunch
12.00-15.00
Afternoon tea
15.00-17.30
Dinner (Thursdays and Fridays)
17.30-22.30

Download our current menus: Lunch/Dinner/Afternoon tea menuSpecial exhibition menu
Reservations:+44 (0)20 7323 8990alternatively +44 (0)7920 712 561

Gallery Café
Ground floor, next to Room 12
Hearty meals, pasta, sandwiches, snacks, soups, salads, desserts, cakes, and hot and cold drinks, all in a family-friendly atmosphere.
Monday-Sunday
10.00-17.00

Court Cafés
Ground floor, Great Court
A large selection of freshly made sandwiches and snacks, salads, desserts, cakes, and hot and cold drinks.
Sunday-Wednesday
09.00-17.30
Thurday-Saturday
09.00-21.00


Family picnic area
Lower floor, downstairs on the south side of Great Court
At weekends and during school holidays, families with children are welcome to use the Ford Centre for Young Visitors as a picnic style eating area.
High chairs are available in all the cafés and the restaurant.

Access information
Lifts
There are lifts throughout the Museum and the vast majority of galleries, and all special exhibitions are fully accessible. You can find out the location of the lifts and how to get to the galleries by picking up a free plan of the Museum from the Information Desk in the Great Court.

Large print guides
There are large print versions of What’s on, the free plan of the Museum and selected gallery guides. These are available from the Information Desk.
Touch tours and handling sessions
A touch tour is available for the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery (Room 4) and the Parthenon Sculptures (Room 18). Please ask at the Information Desk for further details.

Group visit
Organising a group visit:
We advise you let us know if you are bringing a large party to the Museum. Please telephone the Ticket Desk on +44 (0)20 7323 8181 or email tickets@britishmuseum.org
If you would like to arrange a guided tour for a group of 10 or more people, or a guided tour in a foreign language, please email groups@britishmuseum.orgMinimum charge for a group tour £100.

FUTURE EXHIBITIONS
Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
28 May – 23 August 2009 / Room 35 / £8, Members free
A rare chance to see paintings in the royal collection of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur
The exhibition will feature a loan of 56 paintings from India, none of which have been displayed before in Europe. It is a fantastic opportunity to experience the unique art tradition that flourished in the royal courts between the 17th and 19th centuries.
The paintings included in the exhibition range from a handful of miniatures to monumental artworks depicting the palaces, wives and families of the Jodhpur rulers.
Later works depict epic narratives and demonstrate the devotion of Maharaja Man Singh to an esoteric yogic tradition. Jodhpur artists rose to the challenge of creating images for metaphysical concepts and yoga narratives which had never previously been the focus of the region's court art.

TOURS OF THE MUSEUM
At the museum, you can see a lot of things, like:
The Rosetta stone: From Fort St Julien, el-Rashid (Rosetta), EgyptPtolemaic Period, 196 BC
The inscription on the Rosetta stone is a decree passed by a council of priests, one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration).

The Rosetta stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other, portable, 'important' objects. The Rosetta stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn.

Parthenon sculptures:
The Parthenon was built as a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. It was the centrepiece of an ambitious building programme on the Acropolis of Athens. The temple’s great size and lavish use of white marble was intended to show off the city’s power and wealth at the height of its empire.

The mummy of Katebet: From Thebes, EgyptLate 18th or early 19th Dynasty, around 1300-1280 BC

Set of amour: From Japan. Momoyama period, late 16th century (cuirass and sleeves; Edo period, 17th century (helmet), 18th-19th century (remainder)
The helmet, though made in the seventeenth century, is in the tradition of earlier pieces which were often given a hideous face-mask with bristling whiskers to strike terror into the enemy.


King of Ife: Yoruba, probably 12th-14th century AD .From Ife, Nigeria.
One of the most famous items in the Ethnographic collections. This is the head of the Oni, the king of Ife, wearing a crown partly painted in red to represent carnelian beads.

Group of sancai ceramic tomb figures: From northern China, probably Henan province. Tang dynasty, early 8th century AD.
About one metre high, these are among the tallest known burial figures from the Tang dynasty (AD 618-906). The group comprises two fabulous beasts (one with a human face), two fierce lokapala, guardian figures usually seen at the entrance to temples, and in the centre, two officials, one military, one civil. The military official has armour over his green robe and a bird of prey on his hat.

The Flood Tablet: Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BC. From Nineveh, northern Iraq.
The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia. The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC) collected a library of thousands of cuneiform tablets in his palace at Nineveh. They recorded myths, legends and scientific information. Among them was the story of the adventures of Gilgamesh, a legendary ruler of Uruk, and his search for immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a huge work, the longest literary work in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia and Assyria). It was widely known, with versions also found at Hattusas, capital of the Hittites, and Megiddo in the Levant.