London Museum Smithfield site to open in November

The London Museum's new Smithfield Market home will open on 28 November, with Banksy's piranhas, the UK's oldest hand-written document and part of the infamous Whitechapel fatberg all set to go on permanent display.

The museum shut its previous London Wall site in December 2022 as part of a £437m project to move into the vast disused Victorian market building.

As well as its displays, the museum will become a social space featuring day and night time activities like dinner clubs, storytelling events and club nights, while Thameslink trains will even travel through its basement galleries.

The museum's director Sharon Ament said she hoped to "make Londoners proud".

The venue, which claims to be the world's largest city museum, said it wanted "to honour the past and present of this major global capital".

Smithfield's General Market building will be split into three different sections.

First there will be a covered street which will act as the museum's entrance called Real Time, where data will be displayed capturing London in the moment.

Visitors will then head beneath the domed market roof to Our Time where events and activities run with organisations like nightclub fabric and immersive theatre group Punchdrunk Enrichment will take place around 13 large installations from London's living memory.

"Guest editors" will also be invited to shape the various experiences and events based around different themes like "tastes, sounds and wears [clothes]" so that people can "experience a slice of their city", according to the museum.

And in the huge market basement below will be galleries featuring permanent displays called Past Time, which will provide an overview of London's history through chronological and thematic displays.

Among the historic items that will be on display are:

• Syd's Coffee Stall, which was a fixture in Shoreditch for more than a century, will again be serving hot drinks as part of the museum's Tuesday Tea Club
• The bass guitar used by The Clash's Paul Simonon which he was photographed smashing on stage on the cover of London Calling
• A mass of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery, known as the Cheapside Hoard, will will be shown in its fullest permanent presentation
• The ballet costume worn by Russian dancer Anna Pavlova for the landmark solo piece called The Dying Swan, first performed in 1907
• The diving trunks worn by Tom Daley at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Smithfield's vast Poultry Market building will also form part of the museum but will not open until 2028, with its market workers only shutting shop in August 2023.

The museum said the project had been funded "through a unique partnership between the City of London Corporation and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, alongside support from a range of philanthropic supporters including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths' Foundation, The Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund".

Ament said the work had been "a long undertaking – not without its challenges but mostly filled with immense joy and hyper-creativity".

"I hope our museum is a place where people can come together, feel at home, and find themselves grounded in the lives, treasures, challenges and innovations of this city's vast history."

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