Sir John Soane’s Museum is a quirky museum to visit near Holborn in London. The backstory to this place is that it was the house of architect John Soane. Throughout his life he collected many things of interest including paintings, statues, sculptures and an Egyptian Sarcophagus! The unusual story to this collection is that John didn’t want anything to go to his son whom he hated, after he died. So John had parliament see to things that when he died it would become a free to visit museum, and that it would stay essentially in the state in which he had left things in when he died.
As a result of this and unlike most museums there are almost no displays or labels near the artifacts that explain the history or even say the names of the objects you’ll see in the building.
The whole place has artifacts everywhere and it’s more like going through a bric-a-brac shop. Another way to look at it is like when you see a geeky person who collects Star Wars figures and has posters and action figures lining every inch of wall space. It’s like that but with lumps of what looked like Greek or Roman temples, death masks, ornaments or paintings.
The best thing in the collection is the Sarcophagus of Seti I, who was the King of Egypt in 1294 BC! This is covered in hieroglyphics which show up when a light is shone through from the inside. Makes you wonder about the mysteries of the time period and their technology.
There are also many paintings including works from Canaletto, William Turner and William Hogarth. I really enjoyed seeing some of the sculptures and just looking to spot all of the treasures about the museum which without information labels everywhere did feel like you had stumbled into Aladdin’s cave.
They do limit the number of people who can enter the museum to 90 at a time and with narrow passages and artifacts just hooked onto nails on the walls you will be required to store big bags in lockers or carry smaller bags in see through plastic bags which they give you on the outside.
It’s free to enter and there is a gift shop and sometimes there are exhibits which you may have to pay to see, but we didn’t upon this visit. It won’t take you long to explore the whole place and I imagine an hour will be plenty for most people to get their fix. There were quite a few staff around who seemed happy to talk about the collections and I’m sure if you went in with a guide book you could spend a long time to properly see and read about all the things on display.
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