London offers many fantastic museums. Here are a few to check out:

An expansive museum dedicated to animals, featuring numerous skeletons and fossils and housed in an impressive Victorian building.

Discover what it means to be human through science, medicine and art at this thought-provoking museum. Additionally, they host world-class temporary exhibits.

The V&A

The V&A is the world’s foremost museum of art and design. Its collections hold national standing, while its furniture and woodwork gallery includes Britain’s tallest bed – the Great Bed of Ware from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

The Museum appointed outside experts as “art referees” to evaluate new acquisitions at the V&A. They had one of the largest collections of theatre memorabilia including costumes, set models and wigs.

The Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum has long been considered a cathedral to nature. With dinosaur skeletons, ornate architecture and extensive and varied collections encompassing botany, entomology, mineralogy and zoology among other disciplines, its presence makes an impressionful statement about humankind’s relationship to nature.

Explore how artists view nature in the Images of Nature gallery or marvel at Hope, an immense whale skeleton. Additionally, this museum houses its Museum Library which contains extensive book, manuscript and artwork collections related to its scientific departments.

The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum

Since 1901, Samuel Johnson’s birthplace has been preserved and used as a museum. This collection includes personalia, furniture and fine art related to Johnson as well as an impressive library associated with 18th century Lichfield.

The Museum is dedicated to Johnson, most renowned for his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. Additionally, Johnson was known for being an accomplished playwright and essayist of his day and is widely considered one of the greatest men of letters from 18th century Britain.

The London Canal Museum

Near the Kings Cross St Pancras Tube station lies this museum devoted to London’s canal waterways. Exhibits include a narrowboat cabin, scale models and memorabilia from local canal waterways.

The museum is housed in an historic Victorian ice warehouse originally owned by Carlo Gatti (known for his ice cream). Visit inside recreated stables of horses who used to pull canal barges along with looking down into huge ice wells that once housed imported Norwegian ice for cooling canals.

The Tower of London

Established by William the Conqueror, the Tower of London became an iconic symbol of royal power and security. It contained storehouses for weapons storage and production of England’s coinage as well as an early form of zoo–a menagerie.

The White Tower still houses the Crown Jewels and is guarded by bearded Yeoman Warders who keep watch over it. It has played host to many important moments in English and European history.

The British Museum

The British Museum is an impressive global collection that spans centuries and cultures. To take in everything it offers would take days; such iconic pieces as the Rosetta Stone and Parthenon sculptures can be found there.

Establishment of the first national public museum was groundbreaking when established in 1753 by physician Sir Hans Sloane who bequeathed his collections to the nation under one condition–that they be made available for viewing by all members of society.

The Museum of London

The Museum of London was created in 1976 when it merged with the Guildhall Museum operated by City of London Corporation, situated near Barbican Centre.

Visit the “London Before London” gallery to witness animal skeletons and tools dating back to when this area was still wild, such as an auroch’s skull which has since gone extinct.

Other exhibits demonstrate London’s recovery after the Great Fire to become a global city, including a recreation of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and an 1850 wooden prison cell from Wellclose Square.

The Wellcome Collection

Wellcome Collection prides itself on being a free destination for the incurably curious. Situated in a classicist building on Euston Road (183 Euston Road) is its library. There, exhibitions and collections (ivory carvings of pregnant women, used guillotine blades, Napoleon’s toothbrush) explore how medicine and art intersect with life itself.

Sir Henry’s eccentric collection forms the core of this museum of curiosities, while there are also engaging temporary exhibitions and an adjoining cafe and shop.

The British Library

The British Library is the United Kingdom’s national library. Established by Parliament under the British Library Act in 1973, its collections contain copies of every published book published within the UK as well as patents, sound recordings, academic journals and map libraries.

The main collection is housed in a new building on Euston Road near St Pancras Station; other parts can be found at the Document Supply Centers in Bloomsbury, Chancery Lane and Holborn; at Colindale Library for North London residents and at Boston Spa’s Asian & India Office collections in Yorkshire.