The new London Museum opens at Smithfield on 28 November, free and open late
A Victorian market out of public use for over 30 years reopens as the new London Museum on 28 November. Entry is free, it's open until 11pm at weekends, and trains pass a window underground.
On 28 November, a great Victorian market building in the City of London opens its doors again. The London Museum is moving into Smithfield’s General Market, which has been out of public use for more than 30 years. Entry is free, and on Fridays and Saturdays it stays open until 11pm.
The General Market opened in 1883, designed by Sir Horace Jones, the architect behind Tower Bridge and Leadenhall Market, and it closed in the 1990s. The museum puts the project at £437 million and says it drew on more than 70 trades, among them master stonemasons, heritage coppersmiths and blacksmiths from Wales who restored the ironwork.
Why it’s worth your time
A free museum with its doors open at 10pm on a Saturday is a useful thing to know about. It’s somewhere to take a guest, a parent or a first date that isn’t another restaurant, with room to walk and plenty to talk about. The late hours come with a programme too: the museum promises shared late nights with DJ sets, and monthly dinner clubs and house parties.
The building alone may justify the trip: old craft, brought back by people who still know how.
What to look for
- The train window. Below ground, a six-metre viewing window looks onto the Thameslink line as trains pass. The museum calls it a world first.
- The Cheapside Hoard. One of the most significant collections of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery, in the Goldsmiths’ Gallery.
- The Lord Mayor’s Coach. Among the 13 large installations in Our Time, the space under the restored dome.
- The odd and the personal. Dickens’s chair, the vest believed to have been worn by Charles I at his execution, Paul Simonon’s smashed bass guitar, and a chunk of the Whitechapel fatberg.
How to do it well
Book your free ticket. Walk-ups are welcome, but the museum strongly recommends booking, particularly in the opening weeks. It’s open from 10am to 6pm Sunday to Thursday, with last entry at 4.45pm. On Fridays and Saturdays it’s open from 10am to 11pm, with last ticketed entry at 7.15pm and walk-ins until 9.30pm, subject to availability.
The address is General Market, West Smithfield, EC1A 9AG, and the closest stations are Farringdon, Barbican and St Paul’s. On site you’ll find the Temperance Cocoa Rooms for coffee and hot chocolate, Clerk’s House for all-day dining, Bartholomew’s for a drink, and The Roost, a rotating food residency. It would make a fine evening on a weekend in London. The neighbouring Poultry Market, which will hold the temporary exhibitions, is due to follow in 2028.
How we chose: all details are from the London Museum’s own website, including its ticket page and its announcement of 18 June 2026, read on 2 November 2026. The museum hasn’t opened yet and we haven’t visited, so what’s inside is as the museum describes it. The photograph shows ironwork at Smithfield Market rather than the museum itself. Nobody paid to appear here.
