V&A Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum — universally known as the V&A — is the world's largest museum of art, design, and performance. Founded in 1852 in the wake of the Great Exhibition, it was conceived as a place to educate the public and inspire British manufacturers through the best decorative art from around the world. Today its 145 permanent galleries hold over 2.3 million objects spanning 5,000 years of human creativity, from ancient Chinese ceramics to Raphael cartoons, from a cast of Trajan's Column to David Bowie's stage costumes. It is, in the best possible sense, gloriously impossible to categorise.

The experience of visiting is one of constant, slightly overwhelming discovery. You might walk through the Islamic Middle East gallery and stop dead in front of the Ardabil Carpet — one of the world's oldest and most astonishing rugs — then find yourself twenty minutes later standing in front of a John Constable oil sketch, or crouching to read the label on a piece of Tudor jewellery. The building itself is part of the experience: the grand entrance on Cromwell Road opens into a courtyard garden, and the rooms range from hushed and intimate to cathedral-vast. The Raphael Court, the Cast Courts (housing plaster replicas of some of the world's greatest sculptures), and the luminous jewellery gallery are all unmissable.

General admission is free, which makes it one of London's great gifts to visitors. Temporary exhibitions — which have covered everything from Alexander McQueen to Dior to Pink Floyd — do charge entry, so check what's on before you go. The museum café in the original refreshment rooms is worth visiting in its own right: the Morris, Gamble, and Poynter Rooms date from the 1860s and are among the most beautiful dining rooms in London. Friday evenings, when the museum stays open until 10pm, are a genuinely lovely time to visit — quieter than weekends, and the building takes on a different atmosphere in the evening light.