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Apsley House (Wellington Museum)
This stunning house was the first building one saw when entering the city from the west and is therefore known as 'No 1, London'. It was designed by Robert Adam for Baron Apsley in the late 18th century, but later sold to the first Duke of Wellington, who lived here until his death in 1852. In 1947 the house was given to the nation; 10 of its rooms are open to the public today as the Wellington Museum.
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Bank of England Museum
The centrepiece of the museum - which explores the evolution of money and the history of this venerable institution, and which is not nearly as dull as it sounds - is a postwar reconstruction of Soane's original stock office complete with mannequins in period dress behind original mahogany counters. Exhibits range from photographs and coins to a gold bar you can lift up (it's amazingly heavy).
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Bankside Gallery
Bankside Gallery is home to the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. There's no permanent collection at this friendly upbeat place, but there are frequently changing exhibitions of watercolours, prints and engravings. Call ahead for the occasional Artists' Perspectives, where artists talk about their work, and other events.
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Barbican
It's fair to say that its brutalist concrete architecture isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the Barbican is still London's pre-eminent cultural centre, boasting three cinemas, two theatres which feature touring drama as well as dance performances and the highly regarded Barbican Gallery, which stages excellent temporary exhibits.
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Battersea Park
With its riverside promenade, Henry Moore sculptures and Peace Pagoda, erected by a set of Japanese Buddhists to commemorate Hiroshima Day, this park's tranquillity belies a bloody past. It was once the site of an assassination attempt on King Charles II in 1671 and of a duel in 1829 between the Duke of Wellington and an opponent who accused him of treason.
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BFI South Bank
Spring 2007 gave London's cinema lovers a wonderful pressie: the British Film Institute. The spruced-up and extended former NFT includes the Mediatheque (a room with 14 state of the art viewing booths where visitors can browse for free the hundreds of hours of film and TV from the BFI archive), a gallery space with film-related shows, a well-stocked film and bookshop, a restaurant and a gorgeous café with free wifi access and a stand-up piano.
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Bramah Museum of Tea & Coffee
This is a pleasant, nostalgic place to while away half an hour - provided your visit does not coincide with the arrival of another tour group. Trace the route by which tea conquered the world, making its way to the sitting rooms of Holland and England and further afield from the eastern seaports of China; nearby Butler's Wharf once handled 6000 chests of tea in a single a day.
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Britain at War Experience
Under another Tooley St railway arch, the Britain at War Experience aims to educate the younger generation about the effect WWII had on daily life while simultaneously playing on the nostalgia of the war generation who sit in the mock Anderson air-raid shelter listening to the simulated sounds of warning sirens and bombers flying overhead with extraordinary detachment.
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British Library
The British Library moved to these spanking-new premises between King's Cross and Euston Stations in 1998. Colin St John Wilson's exterior of straight lines of red brick, which Prince Charles reckoned was akin to a 'secret-police building', is certainly not to all tastes. But even people who don't like the building from the outside can't fault the spectacularly cool and spacious interior.
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British Museum
One of the world's oldest and finest museums started as royal physician Hans Sloane's 'cabinet of curiosities' - which he later bequeathed to the country - and carried on expanding its collection (which now numbers some seven million items) through judicious acquisition and the controversial plundering of empire. It's an exhaustive and exhilarating stampede through world cultures
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Burgh House
If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, this late-17th-century Queen Anne mansion houses the Hampstead Museum of local history, a small art gallery and the delightful Buttery Garden Café ( - Wed-Sat), where you can get a decent and reasonably priced lunch.
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Cabinet War Rooms & Churchill Museum
You might be surprised how engaging you find the bunker where Prime Minister Winston Churchill met his cabinet and generals during WWII, especially now it's been joined by a whiz-bang exhibition devoted to 'the greatest Briton'. The Cabinet War Rooms, especially the bedrooms, evoke a period of deprivation and duty. Then comes: 'We will fight them on the beaches' and more in the Churchill Museum.
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Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Rooms
Down in the bunker where Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his cabinet and generals met during WWII, around £6 million has been spent on a huge exhibition devoted to 'the greatest Briton'. This whizz-bang, multimedia Churchill Museum joins the highly evocative Cabinet War Rooms, where chiefs of staff slept, ate and plotted Hitler's downfall.
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Clink Prison Museum
Used to detain debtors, whores, thieves and even actors, this was the notorious address that gave us the expression 'in the clink' (in jail). The poky, rather hokey museum inside reveals the wretched life of the prisoners who were forced to pay for their own food and accommodation. There's a nice little collection of instruments of torture, too.
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County Hall
Begun in 1909, County Hall took more than five decades to complete. Today it contains an art museum and gallery, the vast London aquarium and two hotels.
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Dennis Severs' House
This quirky hotchpotch of a cluttered house is named after the late American eccentric who restored and turned it into what he called a 'still-life drama'. Visitors find they have entered the home of a 'family' of Huguenot silk weavers common to the Spitalfields area in the 18th century.
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Design Museum
In recent years this museum, founded by Sir Terence Conran 20 years ago and housed in a 1930s-era warehouse, has abandoned its permanent collection of 20th- and 21st-century objects to make way for a revolving programme of special exhibitions. The shows are populist - a display of Manolo Blahnik shoes; Formula One racing cars; the evolution and use of what is our favourite material in the world, Velcro - and also very popular.
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Dickens House Museum
The great Victorian novelist lived a nomadic life in the big city, moving around London so prolifically that he left behind him an unrivalled trail of blue plaques. This handsome four-storey house is his sole surviving residence before he upped and moved to Kent. The house was saved from demolition and the fascinating museum opened in 1925, showcasing the family drawing room and 10 rooms chock-a-block with memorabilia.
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Dulwich Picture Gallery
The UK's oldest public art gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by idiosyncratic architect Sir John Soane between 1811 and 1814 to house Dulwich College's collection of paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Poussin, Lely, Van Dyck and others. It's a wonderful, atmospheric place but with scarcely a dozen rooms to hang the artwork, limited wall space makes it difficult to view some of the paintings properly.
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Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
The only museum in Britain devoted to Italian art, and one of the leading collections of futurist painting in the world, the Estorick Collection is housed in a listed Georgian house and stuffed with works by such greats as Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini and Ardengo Soffici. Well-conceived special exhibitions might concentrate on Italian divisionism or a collection of classic Italian film posters. Highly recommended.
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Fan Museum
The world's only museum entirely devoted to fans has a wonderful collection of ivory, tortoiseshell, peacock-feather and folded-fabric examples alongside kitsch battery-powered versions and huge ornamental Welsh fans. The 18th-century Georgian town house in which the collection resides also has a Japanese-style garden with an orangery serving afternoon teas.
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Fenton House
One of the oldest houses in Hampstead, this late-17th-century merchant's residence has a charming walled garden with roses and an orchard, fine collections of porcelain and keyboard instruments - including a 1612 harpsichord played by Handel - as well as 17th-century needlework pictures and original Georgian furniture.
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Firepower, The Royal Artillery Museum
Not a place for pacifists or those of a nervous disposition, Firepower is a shoot-'em-up display of how artillery has developed through the ages. The History Gallery traces the story of artillery from catapults to nuclear warheads, while a multimedia exhibit called Field of Fire tries to convey the experience of artillery gunners from WWI to Bosnia in a 15-minute extravaganza.
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Florence Nightingale Museum
Attached to St Thomas's Hospital, this small museum tells the story of feisty war heroine Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who led a team of nurses to Turkey in 1854 during the Crimean War. There she worked to improve conditions for the soldiers before returning to London to set up a training school for nurses at St Thomas's in 1859.
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Fulham Palace
Summer home of the bishops of London from 704 to 1973, Fulham Palace is an interesting mix of architectural styles set in beautiful gardens and, until 1924, enclosed by the longest moat in England. The oldest part to survive is the little redbrick Tudor gateway, but the main building you see today dates from the mid-17th century and was remodelled in the 19th century.
