Household Cavalry Museum
Part living barracks, part museum, this is Britain’s mounted guard seen from the inside. In historic Horse Guards, you look through a glass wall into working stables, then handle the kit that turns rider and horse into a single ceremonial unit. Exhibits knit pageantry to combat reality: breastplates and plumes beside campaign stories. Time your visit with the mounted guard change outside and the whole site becomes a 360° lesson in how tradition still runs on drill, rehearsal and horse sense.
Opening Hours
Admissions
What's not to miss inside?
Stables Window
A working regiment on showGrooming, tack and quiet routine—catch the rhythm behind the spectacle.
📍 Main gallery, glass viewing wall
Dress & Armour
Ceremony engineeredHelmets, cuirasses and boots are tools as much as symbols—weight, balance and shine have jobs to do.
📍 Uniform cases
Trumpeters & Kettledrums
Orders you can hearSound carries commands across a moving parade—silver glint is only half the story.
📍 Music & parade displays
On Duty Outside
Living traditionThe mounted guard changes daily—precision built from endless practice.
📍 Horse Guards Arch, Whitehall
Inspire your Friends
- This isn’t a set—those are real working stables behind the glass, used by the Household Cavalry on duty at Horse Guards.
- The museum sits inside Horse Guards, the official entrance to the royal household since the 18th century—ceremony and office share a roof.
- Two regiments make the Household Cavalry: The Life Guards and The Blues and Royals—museum displays mix their kit, colours and histories.
- The mounted guard on Whitehall is changed daily; time your visit and the museum becomes the best backstage pass in London.
- Those mirrored breastplates aren’t just pretty—they amplify posture cues and line-keeping, so a parade ‘reads’ cleanly from hundreds of metres away.
