Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum, founded in 1852 from the profits and ideals of the Great Exhibition, set out to teach a nation good design and ended up assembling one of the largest art and design collections on Earth - millions of objects spanning five millennia of human making. The range is the point: medieval reliquaries, Renaissance sculpture, Ottoman ceramics, the Ardabil carpet under its timed light, couture fashion, theatre and photography, silver, ironwork and stained glass, all housed in a Victorian palace of a building whose refreshment rooms by Morris, Gamble and Poynter, from the 1860s and 1870s, carry on the catering that made it the first museum in the world to feed its visitors. Two rooms alone justify the trip: the Cast Courts, where full-size Victorian plaster casts include Trajan's Column sliced in two and Michelangelo's David, and the gallery of the Raphael Cartoons, the monumental 1515-16 tapestry designs lent from the Royal Collection. Entry to it all is free.

What you'll find

• The Cast Courts - Trajan's Column in halves and David in Victorian plaster.
• The Raphael Cartoons - monumental Renaissance tapestry designs.
• The fashion galleries - centuries of dress to current couture.
• The Morris rooms - the ornate original refreshment rooms, still serving.

When to go

Year-round; weekday mornings are calmest and Friday late openings add evening hours. Blockbuster exhibitions sell out - book those ahead.

What to expect

The V&A is unfinishable - seven miles of galleries reward choosing two or three sections over attempting a sweep. Wayfinding is famously confusing; take the map. The free collection is world-class, but the headline exhibitions are ticketed and not cheap.

Nearby

The Natural History and Science Museums stand on the same South Kensington block; Hyde Park is a short walk.

Key facts