Royal Museums Greenwich

On this Greenwich Park site you'll find the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, which was designed in 1616 by Inigo Jones but not completed until 1638, and the Royal Observatory, founded in 1675 by Charles II. The museum's Maritime London gallery is a permanent exhibition exploring the importance of London's maritime heritage and its impact on world trade. Exhibits include wreckage from a Zeppelin shot down over the Thames estuary in 1916, the original model for Nelson's Column and early 19th-century plans for the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Exhibits in the museum's Your Ocean gallery, which is aimed at families and teenagers, examine current issues affecting marine conservation, including global warming, over-fishing and pollution. The Time Galleries in the Observatory map the quest of astronomers, horologists who attempted to pin down the elusive concept of time. The Cradle of the Navy: The Royal Hospital School at Greenwich is a permanent display in the Queen's House on the school's origins and life at Greenwich, where it occupied the building now used by the museum from 1806 to 1933. The £15 million extension features six astronomy galleries, a science and astronomy education centre, and a working horology centre. The centrepiece of the project, which almost doubles in size the Observatory areas open to the public, is the 120-seat Peter Harrison Planetarium – the only public planetarium in the UK, it features daily shows (admission charge applies), including 'Sky tonight Live', a tour of that night's sky with a Royal Observatory astronomer. Among the exhibits are a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite and a bronze cone, part of the building, tilted at 51.5 degrees (the latitude of Greenwich) that points to the North Star. Marking the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, in 2012 the umbrella title for the National Maritime Museum, Queen's House and the Royal Observatory Greenwich became Royal Museums Greenwich.