What is it?
The Freud Museum can be found in the London home that Sigmund Freud spent his final years in after fleeing the Nazis in 1938. The family were able to bring across most of their belongings, so it’s a real time capsule – a small chunk of Hapsburg Vienna transported to Hampstead. The museum contains Freud's study and library and more than 2,500 objects from his collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities. You’ll find art by the likes of Sigmund’s grandson, Lucien, Salvador Dalí and Sergei Pankejeffe (one of his most famous patients), plus home movies showing Freud and his family at home, in the garden or walking the dogs. Upstairs, there’s a room devoted to his psychoanalyst daughter Anna, who lived and worked at the house and bequeathed it to become a public museum after she died 1982. The Freud Museum is one of the few in London to have two blue plaques, one for Sigmund and the other for Anna.
Why go?
To give Freud a taste of his own medicine and get an intimate glimpse inside the mind and life of one of the twentieth century’s defining thinkers.
Don’t miss
If you only have a short time to visit the Freud Museum, make a beeline for the study where you can see the famous couch on which psychoanalysis was born and the desk from which Freud scrutinised his patients’ minds. It’s the only room left in its full original state.
When to visit
Open Wed-Sun 10.30am-5pm.
Ticket info
Adults can see the museum for £14.50, concessions for £12.50, young persons aged 12-16 are £9 and children under 12 go free.
Time Out tip
If you love to get down to the nitty gritty of psychoanalytic theory, the Freud Museum hosts loads of fascinating talks and film screenings to sink your teeth into. Have a look at what’s coming up here.