Churchill War Rooms
Beneath Whitehall, the Churchill War Rooms preserve a nerve centre built to outthink catastrophe. You step through low corridors into the Cabinet Room, where nightly briefings chiselled strategy from uncertainty. The Map Room, frozen in time, bristles with pinpricks charting convoys and invasion routes. A disguised 'lavatory' hides the secure Roosevelt hotline, engineering secrecy from humming electronics. The adjoining museum folds childhood reports, speeches and broadcasts into a single, lucid biography. Audio guides keep momentum; brief clips suit mixed attention spans. Paths are narrow, lighting subdued, and detail abundant. Book a timed entry, arrive early, and allow two to three hours to let the bunker's pressure and clarity register.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Cabinet Room
Where the war was runMinisters crowded this low-ceilinged room for nightly briefings; Churchill’s chair still faces the maps.
📍 Core bunker, first rooms
Map Room
24/7 nerve centreStaffed around the clock through WWII, the Map Room is preserved as it was - Churchill spent D-Day (6 June 1944) here.
📍 Bunker corridor, centre
Secret Phone Room
Secure US hotlineA cubicle masked the SIGSALY link that let Churchill speak privately with President Roosevelt.
📍 Disguised ‘lavatory’ door
Churchill Museum
Life, leadership, legacyFrom school reports to wartime speeches and victory broadcasts, follow Churchill’s story in immersive displays.
📍 Galleries off main route
Life Underground
Daily grind of the bunkerMess rooms, typists’ desks and bunks show how staff lived and worked without daylight for years.
📍 Service corridors
Inspire your Friends
- The Cabinet War Rooms opened to the public in 1984; the spaces remained largely intact after their wartime closure.
- Churchill spent D-Day - 6 June 1944 - in the Map Room as staff plotted the invasion and tracked convoys.
- A ‘private toilet’ concealed the Transatlantic Telephone Room, using SIGSALY encryption for secret calls to the US President.
- The bunker’s Map Room was manned 24 hours a day throughout the war, its walls layered with pins and string plotting ship movements.
- The War Rooms form part of Imperial War Museums, alongside HMS Belfast and IWM London.
