Alistair Hardaker | Image: General Market Dome 2023 © Museum of London
London Museum to open in Smithfield on 28 November 2026, completing the £437m restoration of the Victorian General Market after a decade of work.
London Museum will open its new permanent galleries in Smithfield’s General Market on 28 November 2026, completing a decade-long restoration of the Victorian building.
The £437 million project has returned the disused General Market to public use for the first time in over three decades. The building, opened in 1883 and designed by Sir Horace Jones, the architect of Tower Bridge and Leadenhall Market, was closed in the 1990s and had fallen into disrepair.
The restoration has been led by Stanton Williams and Asif Khan, working with conservation architects Julian Harrap. According to the museum, the project has drawn on more than 70 trades and, since 2023, has given more than 40 apprentices a start in fields ranging from plumbing and electrical engineering to sustainable construction management. Craftspeople involved include heritage coppersmiths, stonemasons and blacksmiths restoring decorative ironwork.
The project has incorporated sustainability measures including rainwater-powered toilets, geothermal energy and an eco-concrete mix. The museum states it is set to receive a BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ sustainability rating, ranking among the top 1% of buildings worldwide.
Gallery
General Market - Our Time - night (c) Secchi Smith Asif Khan
General Market – Past Time (c) Secchi Smith
General Market – Train Window (c) Secchi Smith
The building features a rediscovered 800-square-metre system of vaults beneath the streets and a perimeter of heritage shopfronts. The project was developed through a partnership between the City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London, with support from philanthropic funders including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths’ Foundation, The Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The museum unfolds across three spaces. Visitors enter via Real Time, a covered former street acting as the main entrance, before moving into Our Time in the Linbury Hall, a central hub for events and activities set beneath the market’s restored dome. Below ground, the permanent displays of Past Time present London’s history chronologically and thematically. A six-metre viewing window in the subterranean galleries will allow visitors to watch trains pass on the Thameslink line.
Objects on display will include the Lord Mayor’s Coach, the vest believed to have been worn by King Charles I at his execution, Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal, the Cheapside Hoard of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery, and Roman writing tablets from the Bloomberg Collection. The museum’s collection numbers 7 million objects.
Sharon Ament, director of London Museum, said: “This has been a long undertaking – not without its challenges but mostly filled with immense joy and hyper-creativity – and now we are counting down the days to welcome our first visitors.”
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, added: “Backed by one of the largest ever cultural investments in our capital, London Museum will attract millions of visitors and Londoners and reinforce our status as the culture capital of the world. London Museum celebrates the past, creates opportunities in the present and will inspire future generations, as we continue to build a better London for everyone.”
The opening marks the museum’s 50th anniversary. The adjacent Poultry Market will open in 2028, adding two temporary exhibition spaces, a learning centre and a collections store.
