V&A WWII Battle Scars

The lowdown

The grand stone facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum carries scars that most visitors hurry past on their way to the free galleries inside. The pockmarks and gouges in the masonry were caused by shrapnel and bomb blasts during the Blitz, when this corner of South Kensington was hit hard.

Rather than smooth them over, the museum chose to leave the damage and add an inscription recording that it was deliberately preserved as a memorial to the enemy action of those years and the people who endured it. It is free to find, a quiet and dignified reminder of the war embedded in the very walls of one of the world's great museums.