London Museum buildings

We have developed a way of thinking about the main spaces that is based on time. The immediacy of Real Time, the shared experience of Our Time, the endless fascination of Past Time, the interrogation of our collections in Deep Time, the Temporary Time of changing exhibitions, and the creativity of Imagined Time. This will shape how we curate the museum’s content and experiences.

Visitors will enter the museum through West Poultry Avenue ‘Real Time’. From here, they will move into the General Market or the Poultry Market or stop a while for a drink in The Cocoa Rooms café. A fluid space at the axis of the museum, Real Time will be both part of the city and a portal to the museum. Retaining the character of a street, it will open first and close last, and be transformed by lively events.  

The General Market ground floor, with its beautiful domed ceiling, will be known as Our Time. Here, we will join with partners and visitors to share our lived experience of London.

The space was designed to operate "in the round" and we will honour this intent. It will be a sociable place, with a restaurant, a bookshop for London, a Show Space for learning events, and rich displays on London within living memory. Everyone who enters will bring their own expertise on the London they know and will be able to join the conversation. 

Our Time will also be a hub for events – from festivals, markets and performances, to talks and lively discussion. It will become a new space for Londoners and visitors to the city to gather. 

Visitors will descend from the General Market ground floor to find another world below in Past Time. Here a journey though London’s past will be set within a spectacular underground space. Its exposed ceiling and atmospheric vaults will reveal its unique sense of place. 

This space will house the museum’s world-class permanent galleries, where over 10,000 years of London’s history can be explored through object-rich, theatrical, sensory and interactive displays, full of human drama.

Content will range from Roman relics to dress, vehicles to art and photography, and include the exquisite Cheapside Hoard presented in the Goldsmiths’ Gallery. The displays will explore the city’s history through three lenses – time, place and people. They will embrace all that is wonderful about London, but will not shy away from the more difficult and painful aspects of the city’s history. Well-known Londoners of the past will appear, but there will be a particular focus on lives that previously have been too little represented. 

A live train line runs alongside this space, once a huge goods depot for the Great Northern Railway. At the far end, in the old salt store, visitors will be able to watch the trains rumble by as passengers peer in – a visceral reminder of the connectedness of these buildings and of the city in which we are rooted.  

The Poultry Market, scheduled to open from 2028, will house the museum’s temporary exhibitions, collection stores and learning centre. As visitors enter the view will open up of its glorious canopy ceiling, seemingly floating above. Large windows running the length of the building will bring daylight in and offer views through to the sky above. 

On the ground floor, two state-of-the-art gallery spaces will be known as Temporary Time. In these, we will present ambitious, ‘must-see’ temporary exhibitions, drawing on the latest research and innovations in storytelling and design. This level will also house our new world-class learning centre with a dedicated school's arrival, cloakroom and lunch area. 

Sweeping staircases will take visitors up to Imagined Time, a new platform beneath the ceiling where unique displays, programming and creative installations will reflect London’s past, present and imagined future. It will also reveal the museum’s openness by providing visitors a view into the learning spaces, research centre, laboratories and offices that wrap around its perimeter 

At basement level, former cold stores will be transformed into our working collections store. This will be adjacent to a publicly accessible store and display space, offering visitors a unique portal into even more of our seven-million strong collection, a gateway to countless stories.