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National Maritime Museum

Britain and the sea, free, in Greenwich: Nelson's coat with the bullet hole, Turner's Trafalgar and a map of the oceans to walk on.

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Photo by Katie Chan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is the national museum of Britain's life at sea, opened by George VI in 1937 in the buildings of the old Royal Hospital School beside the Queen's House, and built on the gift of Sir James Caird, a shipowner who bought whatever came up for sale and gave it to the nation. The collection now runs past two and a half million items, the largest holding on the subject anywhere: ship models, charts, instruments for finding the way and the time, and the paintings, among them Turner's Battle of Trafalgar, the largest picture he ever made, commissioned by George IV.

Nelson has a gallery to himself. The undress coat he was wearing when he was shot on the deck of Victory is here, with the hole in the left shoulder, beside the story of how the navy became the nation's idea of itself. Other galleries follow the Tudor and Stuart voyages that began it, the Pacific, and the polar expeditions; the Great Map on the floor shows how much of the planet is water, and children are allowed to walk across it. Entry is free, as it is next door at the Queen's House, Inigo Jones's building of 1616 and the first in England in the classical style, where the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I hangs.

Where
Romney Road, SE10 9NF
Nearest station
Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich · 5 min walk

Step-free access

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Hours

Monday10:00 – 17:00
Tuesday10:00 – 17:00
Wednesday10:00 – 17:00
Thursday10:00 – 17:00
Friday10:00 – 17:00
Saturday10:00 – 17:00
Sunday10:00 – 17:00

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