Just a short distance from the British Museum, Soane's Museum is like an antidote to the unbelievably large amount of history that the colossal British Museum offers. The decidedly contrasting Soane's Museum is as small, private, and exclusive as the British Museum is gigantic, public, and crowded.
Let me tell you the story of its founder, Sir John Soane, who was born in the mid-1700s and was one of Britain's greatest architects of his time. Thanks to archaeological explorations and journeys, Soane had perfectly mastered ancient art and then revisited it in a personal and graceful style. But in addition to designing columns and capitals, he soon began to form a collection of marbles, objects, and fragments.
Around the age of 60, Soane began to transform his beautiful apartment building at number 13 Lincoln's Inn Field into an artist's house-museum, also expanding his property to the houses next door. When he died he left the house and collections to the State, which were further enlarged without altering the museum's special character. Among Greek vases and Roman busts, Indian statues and Chinese vessels, Egyptian sarcophagi and Renaissance sculptures, great portraits of English painters and marvelous Venetian landscapes by Canaletto, Sir John created a dense and charming collection in which millennia of civilization blend into an original, joyful set.
Each room has a different, special character. Don't miss the library on the ground floor with its lively Pompeian red walls, which was also used as a dining room, and the study where the walls disappear under a myriad of ancient architectural fragments. Make sure you go to the lower level to enjoy the Gothic charm of the Monk's Yard as well as take in the mysterious Egyptian thrill of the astonishing alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I. Just think, when Soane managed to buy it from the wife of the archaeologist who had unearthed it, he threw a party that lasted three whole days. He loved that sarcophagus so much he even slept inside it!
FUN FACT: created in the 1600s, the square the museum faces that's called Lincoln's Inn Field was the first square in London to have a garden. Nearby on Portsmouth Street, you can visit The Old Curiosity Shop, which is the oldest shop in the city dating back to the seventeenth century.
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