Sir John Soane's Museum

The lowdown

Sir John Soane was a great architect and an obsessive collector, and he turned his own Holborn house into a museum then left it to the nation on the condition that nothing be changed. The result is the strangest and most wonderful free hour in London, and almost nobody who has not been believes how good it is.

Every wall, ceiling and hidden recess is crammed with antiquities, casts, paintings and fragments, arranged exactly as Soane left them two centuries ago. There are walls that swing open to reveal more paintings behind, a pharaoh's sarcophagus in the basement, mirrors and skylights bending the light everywhere. It is part museum, part puzzle box.

It is free, it is small, and it is gloriously uncommercial. No big gift shop, no fuss, just one man's brilliant cluttered imagination kept exactly as it was. Go in knowing nothing and let it unfold around you.