Sir John Soane's Museum

#33

Three conjoined townhouses turned into a daylight laboratory by the Bank of England’s architect. Soane engineered shafts, mirrors and colored glass to ‘borrow’ light from the sky and fold space back on itself; then he packed the result with casts, antiquities, architectural fragments and paintings arranged as a mind map. There are almost no wall labels—by design. Instead, staff ‘open’ the Picture Room’s hinged walls to reveal Hogarth’s satirical series and point out the Egyptian sarcophagus glowing under skylights. Arrive early (admission is free; queues are normal), travel light, and let your eyes adjust: this is a museum you read like a house and a house you read like a book.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 17:00

Wednesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Thursday: 10:00 – 17:00

Friday: 10:00 – 17:00

Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00

What's not to miss inside?

Picture Room Reveal

Art gallery that folds like a cabinet

Hinged screens multiply the wall surface so Soane could hang a major collection in a tiny room—Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s Progress’ hides here.

Wait for the attendant’s ‘unfolding’; note how sightlines stack paintings in layers without touching.

📍 No. 13, ground floor

Sarcophagus of Seti I

Egyptian masterpiece in a London townhouse

Carved from luminous calcite (c. 1270 BCE), it was refused by the British Museum; Soane bought it in 1824 and held candlelit parties for London to marvel.

Walk around slowly—inscriptions ‘light up’ as the skylight shifts; imagine the 1,000-guest soirées held around it.

📍 Crypt level, Dome area

Light Wells & Mirrors

Architecture as optical instrument

Shallow domes, mirrored reveals and colored glass pull daylight deep into the plan—Victorian eco-tech before the name existed.

Stand in the Breakfast Room and look up: the shallow saucer dome ‘floats’ on slivers of light.

📍 Throughout—Breakfast Room, Dome, Monk’s Parlour

Models & Fragments

A school for architects, in miniature

Casts from antiquity and models of Soane’s own works (including the lost Bank of England) turn the house into a 3D reference library.

Compare a fragment to its engraved illustration in the pocket guide—Soane taught by pairing object and image.

📍 Model Room & Staircase voids

Hogarth’s London

Satire as urban x-ray

Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s Progress’ skewers 18th-century vice and fashion; Soane hung it to warn students that taste and character are part of architecture.

Read panel 1 and panel 8 back-to-back: rise and ruin as a single sentence.

📍 Picture Room

🤓 Fun Facts

Soane secured an Act of Parliament (1833) to preserve his house ‘as is’ after his death—arguably the world’s first purpose-made house-museum law.

The British Museum turned down Seti I’s sarcophagus; Soane bought it and hosted three candlelit ‘Sarcophagus Parties’ in 1825 that drew London society in droves.

Labels are scarce on purpose—Soane wanted architects to ‘learn by looking’ and compare objects across sightlines, not by reading long texts.

He was the son of a bricklayer and rose to design the Bank of England—his lost banking halls survive here as models and fragments.

The Picture Room hangs more than 80 works in a space smaller than a modern studio flat—thanks to double-hinged screens that create four ‘phantom’ walls.