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The oldest museum in the world, and one of London’s most fascinating, contains treasures and artifacts from all over the world.

Life on Earth and the Earth itself are vividly explained here using hundreds of traditional and interactive exhibits.

This exciting museum traces centuries of scientific and technological development, with impressive and educational displays.

This museum of decorative arts is one of London’s great pleasures, with 145 astonishingly eclectic galleries. One of the highlights is the huge Fashion Collection, with exhibits dating from 1600 to the present day. The museum also has collections of jewellery, ceramics, metalwork, glass, paintings, prints, sculpture and rooms full of Indian and Far Eastern treasures.

This comprehensive museum located near the Barbican Centre provides a detailed account of London life from prehistoric times to the present day. It is particularly strong on Roman Londinium, but also has a model re-creating the Great Fire of 1666 and a reconstruction of a Victorian street including several original shopfronts.

The world’s largest maritime museum, perfectly located in part of Wren’s Royal Naval Hospital, has much to offer. The 1805 Battle of Trafalgar is re-enacted, and Admiral Nelson’s fatally pierced tunic is on display. Antarctic expeditions are recalled and there is a collection of boats, from coracles to royal barges. State-of-the-art simulators give an idea of modern navigation and what it was like when theTitanicwent down.

In this museum, which is housed in part of the former Bethlehem (“Bedlam”) Hospital for the Insane, a clock in the basement moves remorselessly on, recording the world’s war dead – a figure that has now reached 100 million. Six million of them are commemorated in the Holocaust Exhibition. Other displays include evocative re-creations of World War I trench warfare and the life of Londoners during the World War II Blitz. Now it is “total war” that we have to contemplate, and this, too, is explored.

Based in a clean white 1930s building beside Tower Bridge, this museum is the only one in Britain devoted to 20th- and 21st-century design. Regularly changing exhibitions feature the very best of modern design from the museum’s collection, including both product and graphic design, fashion, furniture, architecture and engineering.

In this former flower-market building, the history of London’s transport system is illustrated with posters, photographs and examples of early buses, tubes and horse-drawn vehicles. There are also interactive “KidZones” for children.

Filling the museum’s subterranean galleries, the collection documents the history of British theatre from Shakespeare’s time up until the present, with a wealth of memorabilia, paintings and prints of famous thespians. It also holds educational workshops, events and performances (see Covent Garden).