London Museum gets £50m extra to complete work

The London Museum has received a multi-million pound boost in new funding to complete work on its new home in Smithfields in the City. Of the £50 million (€60 million), £25 million has come from the City of London Corporation, a highly influential historical organisation that manages and protects the City’s heritage. The remaining £25 million has been provided by the City of London.

The London Museum recently launched a £100 million fundraising drive to help cover the additional cost of the work, increasing the total budget for the work from £445 million to £545 million. In total since the work began, the municipal museum has received £300 million from the City of London Corporation and £125 million from the City of London.

The museum had closed in December 2022 due to lack of space for its collections. The 10,000 m2 restoration project of the General Market in Smithfields has required years of work since 2016. The last copper sheets have been placed on the dome, marking the end of the work on the Poultry Market. The next step is to partition off the various spaces intended for the permanent exhibitions of the General Market.

The Museum of London, recently renamed the London Museum, is dedicated to the history of the city from the Palaeolithic to the present day: its collection is one of the most important archaeological archives in the world with over 7 million objects. The museum’s collection will move to the General Market. Temporary exhibitions will be held in the Poultry Market, a former livestock market dating back to the 1960s. The new exhibition galleries will focus on key milestones in London’s history from Roman times to the digital age.

The General Market, which will house the permanent collections, is expected to open in 2026. The Poultry Market, dedicated to temporary exhibitions, is expected to open in 2028. With this new venue, the London Museum hopes to become one of the most visited museums in London with 2 million annual visitors.