National Maritime Museum - London Museums - London

The National Maritime Museum is one of the best in London in my opinion and the good thing is it doesn’t seem to get as crowded as some of the main central London one’s, probably due to it being a few miles down river from the really busy tourist areas.

Its located on Romney Road, Greenwich and is impossible to miss as its set back in the spacious grounds of Greenwich Park. If you’re coming from Greenwich Pier or the DLR look for a Tex-Mex restaurant called Cafe Sol on the corner of Nelson Road and Greenwich Church Street. Nelson Road leads into Romney Road and the Maritime Museum is a little way along on the right.

Through some black railings you’ll see three large impressive buildings separated by two long colonnaded walkways. The main museum building is on the right, the one with the Harrier jump jet parked in front, the second building is the Queen’s House.

It’s free to go in the museum although you have to get a ticket at the desk about 15 yards inside the main door, they’ll also give you a handy little pocket plan that not only covers the museum but has floor plans and information on the Queen’s House and Royal Observatory.

The National Maritime Museum opened in 1937 and has a collection of over 2million items that chronicle Britain’s seafaring history. They have excellent displays covering Britain’s role in exploration, warfare, trade and the slave trade amongest others and the collection’s have original uniforms, clothes, weapons, charts, maps, timekeeping and navigational items and more from hundreds of years ago right up to modern diving and ocean exploration equipment.

There’s been a clever redevelopment of the inside of the main hall. Looking from the front the original stone building has three main parts with two recessed areas, each side of the main entrance. They’ve added a glass ceiling and glass walls so that now what used to be an exterior wall is on the interior and this gives them a huge display area on two levels.
They’ve put some of the bigger items here, a wave making machine that kids like, large propeller’s off of ocean going ships and a fantastic looking Royal barge from the 18th century.

The main building has exhibits on three levels and a cafe and a coffee bar on the second floor and its a spacious and easy place to get around. They don’t allow photography inside and it’s one of the most well staffed museum’s I’ve seen so they’ll be someone around to tell you not to.

If you come out of the main museum and turn right, walk along to the end of the building and up to the walkway that has all the columns. If you go along to Queen’s House the next building along, they have the the National Maritime Museum’s art collection. Queen’s House was built in 1637 as a home for the wife of James I and it’s been used as an art gallery by the museum since 2001 to show its main collections.

On the 17 November Queen’s House opens up a new exhibition that will run to next September called Art for the Nation using 200 of their most important paintings.

The museum and Queen’s House are open from 10am-6pm in summer, 10am-5pm in winter, both are closed 24-26 December. They’re well worth a visit and the location and other places in the Greenwich area make it a nice place to spend a day.