Royal Academy of Music Museum
A focused museum inside Britain’s oldest conservatoire (1822) that treats instruments as both artworks and machines for sound. The Strings and Keyboard galleries set Cremonese violins beside bows and repair notes; historic harpsichords, clavichords and fortepianos sit ready in climate-controlled cases, with recordings made on the actual instruments so you can hear their character.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Strings Gallery
Violins, violas and cellos by leading Italian and English makers are shown with bridges, soundposts and bows to explain how design shapes tone.Stand by the arching diagrams and compare a flatter late-Cremonese belly to an earlier, higher one—tiny curves, big timbral shifts.
📍 First floor
Historic Keyboards
Harpsichords, clavichords and early pianos chart the evolution from plucked to struck strings and the birth of dynamics.Watch the action videos: a jack plucks a harpsichord; a tangent kisses a clavichord string; a hammer transforms the piano’s voice.
📍 Keyboard room off the main corridor
Performance Gallery
Manuscripts, concert artefacts and portraits link instruments to the musicians, teachers and composers who used them.Find an annotated score and read the pencil edits—interpretation decisions frozen on paper.
📍 Ground floor
Sound Points
Listening stations play recordings made on collection instruments, pairing what you see with what you hear.Compare two violins recorded in the same space—hear how setup and wood resonate differently.
📍 Throughout, beside cases
Inspire your Friends
- The museum’s strings include examples by Antonio Stradivari’s Cremonese tradition, used for research and performance as well as display.
- Its keyboard collection spans from intimate clavichords ideal for private practice to concert-scale harpsichords and early pianos that illustrate changing touch and volume across the 17th–19th centuries.
- Many exhibits are paired with conservation notes—soundpost moves, neck resets, or bow rehairing—showing that ‘original’ sound is the product of continuous expert maintenance.
- Founded in 1822, the Academy's teaching archives feed the museum displays, linking instruments to notable alumni and professors through concert programmes and annotated parts.
