London Museum Opens New Smithfield Home on 28 November — Trains Run Through Its Basement

The London Museum will open its long-awaited new home at Smithfield Market on 28 November, relocating from its former London Wall site as part of a £437m transformation into the vast, disused Victorian market complex.

Three Zones, One City

Smithfield's General Market building is organised into three interconnected zones that blend live data, participatory events and permanent historical displays. The entrance, called Real Time, is a covered street where live data displays capture London as it is. Visitors progress beneath the domed market roof into Our Time, a flexible events space hosting collaborations with partners such as nightclub fabric and immersive theatre company Punchdrunk Enrichment. Here, around 13 large installations will spotlight London's living memory, with rotating "guest editors" curating themed programmes around tastes, sounds and dress.

Below, the expansive basement galleries—collectively called Past Time—house the museum's permanent displays, presenting London's story through chronological and thematic exhibits. The basement is notable for an unusual feature: Thameslink trains will run through galleries at certain points, integrating the city's transport into the visitor experience.

Highlights And Key Objects

Permanent displays include a diverse mix of cultural touchstones and curiosities, among them:

The bass guitar seen being smashed by The Clash's Paul Simonon on the cover of album London Calling will be among the artifacts on show [BBC]

• Banksy's piranhas
• The UK's oldest hand-written document
• A fragment of the notorious Whitechapel fatberg
• The bass guitar used by The Clash's Paul Simonon — the instrument pictured being smashed on the cover of London Calling
• The Cheapside Hoard, a remarkable collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery presented in its fullest permanent display
• Anna Pavlova's costume for the solo ballet The Dying Swan (first performed 1907)
• Tom Daley's diving trunks from the London 2012 Olympic Games
• Syd's Coffee Stall, a Shoreditch fixture for more than a century, which will return to serve hot drinks as part of the museum's Tuesday Tea Club

Poultry Market And Opening Phases

The much larger Poultry Market building will form the museum's second phase but is not scheduled to open until 2028; the market traders only ceased trading in August 2023. The General Market opening in November marks the first major public phase of the project.

Funding, Vision And Quotes

The project has been funded through a partnership between the City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, with philanthropic support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths' Foundation, The Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

"I hope our museum is a place where people can come together, feel at home, and find themselves grounded in the lives, treasures, challenges and innovations of this city's vast history," said museum director Sharon Ament. She described the build as "a long undertaking – not without its challenges but mostly filled with immense joy and hyper-creativity."

The London Museum positions itself as the world's largest city museum and says the Smithfield site will honour both the past and present of the global capital while offering a social programme of daytime and nighttime activities — from dinner clubs and storytelling to club nights and immersive events.

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