Museums

College of Arms

The heralds' own building, with four centuries of arms and pedigrees in the record room.

Free

Also in Royal London and Power & Politics.

The College is the official heraldic authority for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and much of the Commonwealth, and its real substance is the archive: the registers of arms and pedigrees kept unbroken since the sixteenth century, the rolls, the grants, the visitation records of the heralds who rode out to check who was entitled to what. The building that holds them is the 1670s replacement for the one that burnt in the Great Fire.

Walk in on a weekday and you get the Earl Marshal's Court and the portraits for free. That is one room of three, though: the evening tours, arranged through the Officer in Waiting for parties of up to twenty, add the Waiting Room and the Record Room, and bring manuscripts out of the archive chosen for whoever has come. Worth the booking.

Where

130 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4BT

Nearest station

Mansion House · 3 min walk

Hours

Hours compiled from public listings, checked 8 September 2026.

NearbyMuseums

• Bankside Gallery7 min walk
• Tate Modern7 min walk
• London Mithraeum7 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• The Wren CoffeeCoffee2 min walk
• Tower of St Mary SomersetMonuments & Ruins2 min walk
• St Paul's CathedralPerformance venues2 min walk

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