Concept
The Museum of London is a museum in London, covering the history of the city from prehistoric to modern times, with a particular focus on social history. 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 1911). From 1976 to 2022, its main site was located in the City of London on 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. 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. In December 2022, the museum permanently closed its site at London Wall in preparation for reopening in 2026 at Smithfield Market as the London Museum. The museum has the largest urban history collection in the world, with more than six million objects. It is primarily concerned with the social history of London and its inhabitants throughout time. Its collections include archaeological material, such as flint handaxes from the prehistoric Thames Valley, marble statues from a Roman temple called the London Mithraeum, and a cache of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery called the Cheapside Hoard. Its modern collections include large amounts of decorative objects, dresses, paintings, prints and drawings, social history objects, and oral histories. The museum continues to collect contemporary objects, such as the Whitechapel fatberg or the Trump baby blimp. The museum is part of a group that also includes two other locations: the Museum of London Docklands, which is based in West India Quay and remains open to the public; and Museum of London Archaeology, which conducts archaeological excavations both inside and outside London.
