Victoria & Albert Museum

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) houses the world’s largest collection of art and design, making it the ‘go to’ resource for professionals, students and amateurs seeking inspiration for their own creative projects. In its 12.5 acres and 145 galleries can be found the most varied and breathtaking displays of fine and decorative arts, jewellery, furniture, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, glassware and textiles.

The museum has moved premises and changed its name several times since 1837 as its collections have continued to grow, currently by thousands of items every year. It became the ‘Victoria & Albert Museum’ in 1899, when Queen Victoria ceremonially laid the foundation stone for a new wing. She had long wanted it to be the ‘Albert Museum’, in honour of her beloved late husband’s great interest in its work, but she was gently persuaded otherwise.

Entrance is free and it receives millions of visitors each year into its atmospheric halls. Almost every country is represented somewhere in the galleries. It is impossible to point to any of its items as being the most important or the most precious, as there are over two million of them, but among the oldest are some Chinese artefacts dating from the 4th millenium BC.

(Image: Anthony O’Neil at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)