Imperial War Museum London

The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 to record the First World War and moved in 1936 to its current home, the former Bethlem Royal Hospital ('Bedlam') on Lambeth Road, whose central dome and portico survive from the 18th-century asylum building. The museum covers conflicts involving Britain and the Commonwealth from the First World War to the present, with a full-size German V-2 rocket and a Spitfire suspended in the six-storey atrium alongside a Harrier jet and a Battle of Britain-era V-1 flying bomb. The Holocaust Galleries, extensively redeveloped and reopened in 2021, present artefacts, testimony, and documentation tracing the persecution and murder of European Jews, and are recommended for visitors aged 14 and over given the graphic content. The First World War Galleries, opened for the war's centenary in 2014, use trench reconstructions and immersive soundscapes alongside period objects to convey the experience of combatants and civilians. Curatorial approach throughout blends chronological conflict-by-conflict galleries with thematic sections on the Blitz, espionage, and the home front. The building itself, though much altered internally since its asylum days, retains its Portland stone facade and dome, one of few large-scale conversions of a historic institutional building into a modern museum in London. Admission to the permanent galleries is free, while the Holocaust Galleries require a free timed ticket to manage visitor numbers.