Secrets & Espionage

Where the state kept its secrets and where the spies were made up: the bugged mansion, the bunkers, the headquarters you can only look at, the memorials to the agents, and the addresses of Bond and Smiley.

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Churchill War Rooms

The bunker under Whitehall where the war was run, left as it was when the lights went off in 1945, with the Cabinet Room and the transatlantic telephone disguised as a lavatory.

Bunkers & war roomsMuseumsGo inside

Photo by en:User:Jdhowens90, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums and Power & Politics.

The Cabinet War Rooms opened a week before the war began and were used through the Blitz and the V-weapons: the Map Room, where the pins were never moved after August 1945, the Cabinet Room where Churchill sat with his back to the map, his bedroom, and the cupboard marked as a toilet that held the scrambler phone to Roosevelt. The Churchill Museum alongside is the best single account of the man, with a fifteen-metre digital lifeline of his life. Book ahead; the corridors are narrow and the queue outside is not.

Where
King Charles Street, SW1A 2AQ
Nearest station
Westminster · 4 min walk

Step-free access

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Hours

Monday09:30 – 18:00
Tuesday09:30 – 18:00
Wednesday09:30 – 18:00
Thursday09:30 – 18:00
Friday09:30 – 18:00
Saturday09:30 – 18:00
Sunday09:30 – 18:00

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 3 September 2026.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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