Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum grew straight out of a hit. The Great Exhibition of 1851 drew millions to Hyde Park, turned a profit, and convinced Prince Albert and the reformer Henry Cole that Britain's manufacturers needed to learn design from the world's best objects. The profits bought land in South Kensington, and the museum that opened there in 1852 was meant to be a teaching collection for craftsmen and students, kept open late so working people could come after their shifts.

That founding idea still shapes what you see. This is a museum of how things are made and decorated rather than of paintings on a wall. It holds around 2.8 million objects across 5,000 years, from Tang dynasty ceramics to Vivienne Westwood gowns. In the Cast Courts, two towering halls, you can stand beneath a full-height plaster copy of Rome's Trajan's Column, sawn in two to fit under the roof.

Among the real treasures are the Raphael Cartoons, seven huge designs for Vatican tapestries lent by the Royal Collection, and Tipu's Tiger, a life-sized wooden automaton of a tiger mauling a British soldier, built for an Indian sultan who fought the East India Company. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of the present building in 1899, one of her last public appearances, and gave it the name it carries now for herself and her late husband Albert.