The British Museum Review

The British Museum is one of the truly great English museums. The building itself is amazing, and they have a huge range of exhibitions. The Egyptian exhibit is not to be missed and includes the famous Rosetta Stone. We’ve been to the British Museum a couple of times, and the most recent review was part of a child-free cheap day out in London. I also visited St Paul’s Cathedral and the Natural History Museum in the same day.

They have plenty of activities for children although it’s not the most hands-on of museums. A note of caution – most of the central area is devoted to shops and they’re all very open plan so it can be hard to keep the kids away from them!

For security reasons your bags will be searched. At peak times this can cause a delay in getting in. 

The galleries

The most popular (aka crowded) bit of the British Museum is all of the areas devoted to the Eqyptians (gallery 4 and 61-66) and the Parthenon sculptures (gallery 18).

One of the many famous exhibits they have at the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone. This stone is how they managed to decipher hieroglyphs. But you’ll be lucky to get close to it as a million people are also trying to get close. There’s loads of other really fascinating Egyptian exhibits though.

If you get away from the most popular galleries it’s all much calmer and easier to explore without jostling. There’s some very quirky things here (and quite a lot of controversial ones TBF). Some of my favourite things were the chess set that inspired Wizards Chess from Harry Potter

We went to Sutton Hoo a few months ago so it was quite cool to see the original helmet and other treasures.

Misson Impossible – British Museum edition

Some of the exhibits are protected by lasers. And if you happen to be a small child and lean to close to the exhibit you set the alarms off! My kids are quite well trained, well we go to enough museums, they should be, so he was a long way from the exhibits. Turns out the lasers are a considerable distance from the goodies so it’s not hard to set them off. A couple of kids did whilst we were in there. I actually felt sorry for the lady in charge.

But now I know that the boys don’t have a career within MI5 ahead of them!

How child friendly is the British Museum?

As I mentioned before, one of my visits to review the British Museum was child free, but we’ve also been with the kids. How child friendly it is really does depend a lot of how interested your kids are in history. Mine really like history and so they did enjoy it, but it’s not a particularly hands-on museum. That’s going to put a lot of kids off. I also think it’s good for older kids as well who can appreciate what they’re looking at.

The British Museum run various free gallery activities, as well as providing backpacks and explorer trails. Museum Missions is a free trail using your phone to scan QR codes around the museum to complete various challenges.

If you want a really hands-on, child friend museum then the Science Museum or Natural History Museum is a good shout.

Admission Cost

Entry – Free, payments by donation. Some exhibitions may be chargeable. For the latest exhibition details visit their website.

There’s an audio guide app available. The full package is £4.99. Find out more on their website.

Parking / How to get there

Address – Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG

Parking – None on site. You’re best off travelling by tube. There are four tube stations near-by. Check out the website for more details. 

Toilets

Excellent facilities, including dedicated baby change, they can get busy so there can be a queue even when the museum itself isn’t busy.

Food

There is a cafe on site but there is also an area where you can eat your own picnic

Our British Museum Review

You could easily spend a half a day here, or just do a whistle stop tour of a few select galleries. There’s loads to see and it’s really interesting. But there are more child-friendly museums out there, particularly for younger kids.