St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum — Attraction in London

While the hospital itself is clean and tidy, staff are overworked as all hospitals these days are within london especially - they remain professional and helpful as much as they can be. I admire them for their hard work and I wouldn't trade places with them for all the money in the world. Parking is a complete nightmare. Getting to the front entrance by car if your not familiar with the area is much the same - maybe I'm missing out on some car park somewhere but I've yet to spot one. Nothing the hospital as such can do about this, but parking is expensive and while you can get reimbursement for transporting a regular outpatient etc you can't when stuck visiting an impatient daily for a few weeks and having to pay in the region of £20 a day for little over an hour or two because you live in a different borough but its the hospital they have brought family to because its can serve them best for their needs. Never mind the congestion charge on top! Had I not two small kids to drag with me in the freezing comd I'd have just used public transport and left my car at work each day to pick up on...

This is one of those wonderful little museums that abound in London which don't get that many visitors and are free to go into. St Bartholomew's Hospital is the oldest hospital in London to still stand n its original site and this museum tells its story from its founding in 1123 to the modern day. You can easily while a way an hour inside here (opens Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm) and there's plenty of interest. It was at Barts Hospital that Holmes and Watson met and they display the plaque that commemorates this historic meeting together with the first words spoken between them in A Study In Scarlet. But a major highlight is the glimpse you get of the staircase of the Grand Hall, the walls of which were painted by the 18th century artist William Hogarth. The detail is incredible. Hogarth actually used patients who were being treated in the hospital at the time and, such was his eye for detail that modern day doctors can still diagnose some of their conditions just by looking at these wonderful painting. A must for all those who seek...

Small, free, quiet museum of early British medicine, with history of St. Bart's & other local hospitals, with more searchable in their online catalogue. Be sure to see William Hogarth's 18th cent. paintings in room at back. Just steps away are Bart's Pathology Museum, the 14th cent. Church of St. Bartholomew the Less, & the old Smithfield meat mkt. In Sherlock Holmes lore, St. Bart's is where Holmes first meets Watson in 'Study In Scarlet', & the location of the cliff-hanger ending in Reichenbach Fall, S2 ep-3 of the BBC TV...