Imperial War Museum

Stand still for a moment on the path that leads to the entrance. Ahead of you, two enormous grey gun barrels point over your head toward the city. Behind them, a pale stone portico rises, topped by a green copper dome. Around you, the trees of a quiet park move in the wind. It is a strange first impression. Weapons, columns, birdsong, and the distant hum of South London traffic, all at once.

This is the Imperial War Museum, in Lambeth, just south of the River Thames. It tells the story of modern war, from the First World War to the conflicts of our own century. But it does something unusual. It is less interested in generals and victories than in ordinary people. Soldiers, nurses, factory workers, refugees, children in air raid shelters. Their letters, uniforms and photographs fill these galleries.

The museum was born in the middle of a war. It was founded in 1917, while the First World War was still being fought. The idea was simple and urgent. Britain wanted to collect the record of that war while it was happening, before the objects and memories were lost. Staff gathered weapons, posters, diaries and works of art from the front lines and from the home front. The museum first opened to the public in 1920, at the Crystal Palace in South London.

It moved a few times before it came here. In the 1920s it was housed in South Kensington. Then, in 1936, it moved into this building. And here is the first surprise. This building was not designed as a museum at all. For more than a century, it was a psychiatric hospital... the Bethlem Royal Hospital, one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world.

Bethlem has a long and uneasy reputation. Its nickname, Bedlam, entered the English language as a word for chaos and uproar. The hospital moved to this site in Lambeth in the early nineteenth century. The dome you see above the portico was added later in that century. When the hospital moved out to the suburbs around 1930, the long side wings were demolished. Only the central block survived — and that is the building in front of you now.

The land around it became a public park. It was given to the people of London by the newspaper owner Lord Rothermere. He named it the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, after his mother. So the grass, the paths and the old trees you walked past are part of the same story. A hospital became a museum, and its grounds became a place for local families to sit in the sun.

Now look again at those two great guns outside the entrance. They are fifteen-inch naval guns, taken from two British battleships, HMS Ramillies and HMS Resolution. Each barrel weighs many tonnes. Guns like these could fire shells across distances of many kilometres at sea. Placed here, in a park, they have a different effect. They make you feel small. Many visitors stop to photograph them before they even reach the door.

The building itself carries scars of the wars it describes. During the Second World War, German bombs fell on London night after night, in the period known as the Blitz. This museum was hit too. Some of the collection was damaged, and parts of the building had to close. So when you walk inside, remember that this is not only a place about war. It is also a place that lived through one.

Step inside, and the atmosphere changes completely. The central atrium is tall, bright and open. The space was redesigned by the architects Foster and Partners, and it reopened in 2014, the year that marked one hundred years since the start of the First World War. Look up. Aircraft and large objects hang above you and stand around you — a Spitfire fighter plane, a German V-2 rocket, and other machines of war, shown at their real size.

The V-2 deserves a second look. It was one of the world's first long-range ballistic missiles, used by Germany against London and other cities near the end of the Second World War. It arrived faster than sound, so people heard no warning before it struck. Standing next to it, in a city it was built to attack, is a quiet and powerful experience. Few objects in the museum connect so directly to the ground under your feet.

The First World War galleries are among the most visited spaces here. They follow the war from its beginning to its end, through objects, film and the words of the people who lived it. Elsewhere, you will find galleries on the Second World War and on later conflicts. There is also a gallery of Victoria Crosses and George Crosses, Britain's highest awards for bravery. Each medal sits beside the story of the person who earned it.

On the upper floors are the Holocaust Galleries, which opened in 2021. They tell the history of the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. The tone here is calm and serious. The museum advises that this section may not be suitable for younger children. Many visitors move through it slowly, in silence. Give yourself time, and do not rush it.

Before you leave, walk out into the park again. In one corner, you will find a section of the Berlin Wall, painted and worn, brought here from the divided German capital. Nearby is the Tibetan Peace Garden, a calm circle of stone and planting. It sits only a short walk from the guns. That contrast seems deliberate. Weapons at the front door, and a garden for peace just across the grass.

As you walk away, turn back for one last look. See the dome of the old hospital, the columns, the long grey barrels against the sky. This building has held patients, bombs, soldiers' letters and millions of visitors. Now it holds you too, for a moment. Listen to the park around you, the children, the dogs, the wind in the trees. This is the ordinary peace that so many people in these galleries never got to enjoy.