Petrie Museum
egypt's everyday life, in dense glass cases
A cramped, wonderfully old-fashioned free museum at UCL holding one of the world's greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology, around eighty thousand objects in dense glass cases.
Free to visit · Bloomsbury · Euston Square · WC1E 6BT
Opening: Check UCL listings · typically afternoons · closed Sun & Mon
Hidden in a side street of the UCL campus is one of the greatest collections of Egyptian archaeology anywhere, and it is free. The Petrie Museum holds around eighty thousand objects, gathered largely by the pioneering archaeologist Flinders Petrie, crammed into dense old-fashioned glass cases.
Where the British Museum shows the grand and the golden, the Petrie shows the everyday, tools, pottery, jewellery, the world's oldest dress, fragments of ordinary lives from thousands of years ago along the Nile. It is intimate and scholarly rather than slick, the sort of place archaeology students fall in love with.
It is small, slightly eccentric and gloriously uncommercial, the kind of free hidden gem you leave feeling you have been let in on a secret. Bring your curiosity and take your time.
Getting there: Part of UCL, tucked off Malet Place in Bloomsbury, a couple of minutes from Euston Square or Goodge Street.
Best time to go: A weekday afternoon. It is small and rarely busy, so you can take your time among the cases.
Insider tip: Check the opening hours carefully because they are limited, then go and ask the staff what to look for, the world's oldest dress among them. It pairs perfectly with the free Grant Museum of Zoology, another UCL gem a couple of minutes away.
Official site: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/petrie-museum
Free things to do in London · London Free Guide