Royal Museums Greenwich in London

In 2012, the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, the Royal Observatory (incorporating the Peter Harrison Planetarium) and the Cutty Sark joined together under a new name: Royal Museums Greenwich.

Located in the beautiful World Heritage Site of Greenwich, these four top attractions welcome thousands of visitors each year.

Take a day to enjoy all that Royal Museums Greenwich have to offer: you can stand in two hemispheres astride the Prime Meridian, touch a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, see Harrison's timekeepers and Nelson's uniform, before travelling to the stars in London's only planetarium.

With so many treasures on display, and a changing series of special exhibitions, there's always something new to amaze and entertain you at Royal Museums Greenwich.

The National Maritime Museum

The National Maritime Museum (NMM) in Greenwich, England is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings forming part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, it also incorporates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and 17th-century Queen's House. In 2012, Her Majesty The Queen formally approved Royal Museums Greenwich as the new overall title for the National Maritime Museum, Queen’s House, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich and the Cutty Sark. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the National Maritime Museum does not levy an admission charge although most temporary exhibitions do incur admission charges.

The Queen's House

The Queen's House, Greenwich, is a former royal residence built between 1616–1619 in Greenwich, then a few miles downriver from London, and now a district of the city. Its architect was Inigo Jones, for whom it was a crucial early commission, for Anne of Denmark, the queen of King James I of England. It was altered and completed by Jones, in a second campaign about 1635 for Henrietta Maria, queen of King Charles I. The Queen's House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history, being the first consciously classical building to have been constructed in Britain. It was Jones's first major commission after returning from his 1613–1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance and Palladian architecture in Italy.

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich (formerly the Royal Greenwich Observatory or RGO), in London played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and is best known as the location of the prime meridian. It is situated on a hill in Greenwich Park, overlooking the River Thames.

The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the foundation stone being laid on 10 August.At that time the king also created the position of Astronomer Royal, to serve as the director of the observatory and to "apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation." He appointed John Flamsteed as the first AR. The building was completed in the summer of 1676. The building was often given the title "Flamsteed House", in reference to its first occupant.

The Cutty Sark

The Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis shipping line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion.

Cutty Sark is one of three ships in London on the Core Collection of the National Historic Ships Register (the nautical equivalent of a Grade 1 Listed Building) – alongside HMS Belfast and SS Robin. She is one of only three remaining original composite construction (wooden hull on an iron frame) clipper ships from the nineteenth century in part or whole, the others being the City of Adelaide, awaiting transportation to Australia for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile.