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Geffrye Museum
Definitely Shoreditch's most accessible sight, this 18th-century ivy-clad series of almshouses with a herb garden draws you in immediately. The museum is devoted to domestic interiors, with each recently renovated room of the main building furnished to show how the homes of the relatively affluent middle class would have looked from Elizabethan times right through to the end of the 19th century.
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Guards Museum
If you found the crowds at the Change of Guards tiresome and hard to see, get here by , any day from April to August, to see the guards in formation outside the museum for their march up to Buckingham Palace. Then check out the history of the five regiments of foot guards and their role in military campaigns from Waterloo on, in this little museum established in the 17th century during the reign of Charles II.
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Guildhall Art Gallery
The gallery of the City of London provides a fascinating look at the politics of the square mile over the past few centuries, with a great collection of paintings of London in the 18th and 19th centuries. The real highlight of the museum is deep in the darkened basement, where the archaeological remains of Roman London's amphitheatre, or coliseum, lie.
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Handel House Museum
George Frederick Handel lived in this 18th-century Mayfair building for 36 years until his death in 1759, and the house opened as a museum in late 2001. It has been restored to how it would have looked when the great German-born composer was in residence, complete with artworks borrowed from several museums.
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Horniman Museum
This museum is an extraordinary place, comprising the original collection of wealthy pack rat tea merchant Frederick John Horniman, who had the Art Nouveau building with clock tower and mosaics specially designed to house it in 1901. Today it encompasses everything from a dusty stuffed walrus and voodoo altars from Haiti and Benin to a mock-up of a Fijian reef and a wonderful collection of concertinas.
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Hunterian Museum
The collection of anatomical specimens of pioneering surgeon John Hunter (1728-93) inspired this fascinating, slightly morbid, little-known, yet fantastic London museum. Among the more bizarre items on display are the skeleton of a 2.3m giant, half of mathematician Charles Babbage's brain, and, Winston Churchill's dentures.
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Imperial War Museum
Despite the threatening pair of 15-inch naval guns outside the front entrance to what was once Bethlehem Royal Hospital, commonly known as Bedlam, this is for the most part a very sombre, thoughtful museum. Most of its exhibits are given over to exploring the human and social cost of conflict.
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Institute of Contemporary Arts
Housed in a traditional building along the Mall, the ICA is as untraditional as it gets. This is where Picasso and Henry Moore had their first UK shows, and ever since then the institute has sat comfortably on the cutting and controversial edge of the British arts world, with an excellent range of experimental/progressive/radical/obscure films, music and club nights, photography, art, theatre, music, lectures, multimedia works and book readings.
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Jewel Tower
The Jewel Tower was built in 1365 to house the treasury of Edward III and is one of the last vestiges of the medieval Palace of Westminster. Today it houses exhibitions about the history and procedures of Parliament. There's a 25-minute explanatory video (when it works) and this is a useful first stop before a visit to the House of Commons.
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Jewish Museum
This branch of the Jewish Museum examines Judaism and Judaistic religious practices in the prestigious Ceremonial Art Gallery, and the story of the Jewish community in Britain from the time of the Normans to the present day through paintings, photographs and artefacts in the History Gallery. There's also a gallery for temporary exhibitions.
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Karl Marx Memorial Library
Clerkenwell has quite a radical history. An area of Victorian-era slums (the so-called Rookery), it was settled by mainly Italian immigrants in the 19th century. Modern Italy's founding father Garibaldi dropped by in 1836, and during his European exile, Lenin edited 17 editions of the Russian-language Bolshevik newspaper Iskra (Spark) from here in 1902-03.
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Keats House
A stone's throw from the lower reaches of the heath, this elegant Regency house was home to the golden boy of the Romantic poets from 1818 to 1820. Keats wrote his most celebrated poem, Ode to a Nightingale , whilst sitting under a plum tree (now replaced) in the garden in 1819.
Undergoing redevelopment at the time of writing and due to reopen in late 2008.
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Kenwood House
This magnificent neoclassical mansion stands in a glorious sweep of landscaped gardens leading down to a picturesque lake. The house was remodelled by Robert Adam in the 18th century; his Great Stairs and the library are especially fine. Today it contains paintings by the likes of Gainsborough, Reynolds, Turner, Hals, Vermeer and Van Dyck.
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Kinetica
There always seems to be something eye-catching going on within the clear glass walls of the UK's first museum dedicated to kinetic, electric and magnetic art. Whether it's a robot playing drums or a giant inflatable figure 'squirming' on the floor, it just seems to draw passers-by in.
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Linley Sambourne House
Tucked away behind Kensington High St, this was the home of Punch political cartoonist and amateur photographer Linley Sambourne and his family from 1874 to 1910. It's one of those houses whose owners never redecorated or threw anything away. What you see is pretty much the typical home of a well-to-do Victorian family: dark wood, Turkish carpets and rich stained glass. Visits are by 90-minute guided tour only.
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London Canal Museum
This quirky but very worthwhile museum is housed in an old ice warehouse (with a deep well where the frozen commodity was stored) dating from the 1860s and traces the history of Regent's Canal, the ice business and the development of ice cream through models, photographs, exhibits and archive documentaries. The ice trade was huge in late Victorian London, and 35,000 tonnes of it were imported from Norway in 1899.
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London Transport Museum
This museum has had a massive renovation, with a revitalised existing collection (which consisted of buses from the horse age until today, plus taxis, trains and all other modes of transport) and more new collections, more display space and a 120-seat lecture theatre for educational purposes. You can get your Mind the Gap boxer shorts and knickers at the museum shop.
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Museum in Docklands
Housed in a converted 200-year-old warehouse once used to store sugar, rum and coffee, this museum offers a comprehensive overview of the entire history of the Thames from the arrival of the Romans in AD 43. But it's at its best when dealing with specifics close by such as the controversial transformation of the decrepit docks into Docklands in the 1980s and the social upheaval and dislocation that accompanied it.
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Museum Of Immigration & Diversity
This unique Huguenot town house was built in 1719 and housed a prosperous family of weavers, before subsequently becoming home to waves of immigrants including Polish, Irish and Jewish families, the last of which built a synagogue in the back garden in 1869. In keeping with the house's multicultural past, it now houses a museum of immigration and diversity, whose carefully considered exhibits are aimed at both adults and children.
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Museum of London
The Museum of London is one of the capital's best museums but remains largely off the radar for most visitors. That's not surprising when you consider that it's encased in concrete and located above a roundabout in the Barbican. Despite this, once you're inside it's a fascinating walk through the various incarnations of the capital from Anglo-Saxon village to global financial centre.
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Museum of Rugby
This museum, which will clearly appeal only to rugby-lovers, is tucked behind the eastern stand of the stadium. Relive highlights of old matches in the video theatre, take a tour of the grounds and visit the museum collection, exhibiting or storing some 10,000 items related to the sport.
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National Army Museum
Suitably located next door to the Royal Hospital, this old-fashioned museum tells the history of the British army from the perspective of the men and women who put their lives on the line for king and country, conveying the horrors and perceived glories of war with a refreshing lack of meddling by modern technology.
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National Gallery
With more than 2000 Western European paintings on display, the National Gallery is one of the largest galleries in the world. But it's the quality of the works, and not the quantity, that impresses most. Almost five million people visit each year, keen to see seminal paintings from every important epoch in the history of art.
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National Maritime Museum
Though it hardly sounds like a crowd-pleaser, this museum designed to tell the long and convoluted history of Britain as a seafaring nation is the most impressive sight in Greenwich. From the moment you step through the entrance to this magnificent neoclassical building you'll be won over. And it just gets better as you progress through the glass-roofed Neptune Court into the rest of this three-storey building.
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National Portrait Gallery
Excellent for putting faces to names over the last five centuries of British history, the gallery houses a primary collection of some 10,000 works, which are regularly rotated, among them the museum's first acquisition, the famous 'Chandos' portrait of Shakespeare.
