About London Museums

What This Site Is

London Museums is an independent guide to museums and museum-like attractions across London. It lists 48 places to visit, from the national institutions in South Kensington to the small house museums most visitors never hear about. Alongside the directory sit 14 guides and a set of answered questions covering the practical things visitors ask before a trip: what is free, what costs money, how to get in, and where to book.

Who Writes It

The site is written by James Whitfield, a London travel writer. His work here is research rather than travelogue. He reads the live listings published by each museum, checks admission prices against each museum's own ticket page, tracks which collections are free and which have started charging, and reports opening hours as the museums themselves state them. He has not personally visited every museum on the list, and the site does not pretend otherwise. You will not find an invented first-hand anecdote anywhere in these pages, because a made-up story about a rainy Tuesday at a museum the writer never entered would tell you nothing useful. What you get instead is a careful reading of what the museums themselves publish, gathered in one place and written up honestly. When a price or an hour could not be verified, the page says so rather than printing a number that might be wrong.

How The Money Works

The site earns money through affiliate links, and it does so in a way you can follow without effort. Of the 48 museums listed, 20 are free to enter and 28 charge admission. 25 of the 48 sell tickets through a booking platform. When a reader books through one of those links, the site earns a commission from the platform at no extra cost to the reader. The other 23 listings earn the site nothing at all. Free museums get no buy button, and paid museums with no reseller are linked straight to their own official ticket page. The site also links free, pay-what-you-want walking tours through GuruWalk, and earns a commission when a reader books one of those too. The tours are genuinely free to book: you pay nothing upfront and tip the guide if you wish.

Two museums, Keats House and John Wesley's House, sell no ticket online anywhere, so their listings are marked door-only. You turn up and pay, or turn up and walk in.

What This Site Is Not

London Museums does not run any museum. It does not sell tickets itself. It is not a tourist board, and it is not affiliated with any museum, with Visit London, or with any UK public body. It is one writer, a lot of reading, and a directory.

What The Site Will Not Do

A few commitments, stated plainly. The site will not print a price it has not checked against the museum's own ticket page. It will not dress up research as lived experience. It will not put a buy button on a museum that is free, and it will not send you to a middleman when the museum sells tickets itself. If something on this site is wrong, write to info@londonmuseums.net and it will be corrected. That is the whole deal.