AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Museum London is the city's essential cultural institution, blending over 5,500 artworks with nearly 50,000 historical artifacts under one striking riverfront roof. Founded in 1940 and now housed in a purpose-built design by celebrated Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama, the museum tells the story of southwestern Ontario through both its creative output and its lived history—free of charge.↗↗↗↗
What makes Museum London stand out isn't just its dual identity as an art gallery and a history museum—it's the way the building itself opens onto one of the city's most beautiful natural settings. The Centre at the Forks, completed in a 2018 renovation, replaced a blank wall with a soaring two-storey window that frames the confluence of the Thames River, turning every visit into an experience of landscape and culture woven together.↗↗
Where Art Meets the River
The museum's building at the forks of the Deshkan Ziibi/Thames River was designed by Raymond Moriyama, the internationally acclaimed Canadian architect behind Toronto's Ontario Science Centre and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Opened in 1980, the angular structure sits on a bluff where two branches of the Thames meet, and the 2018 Centre at the Forks renovation finally turned the building to face that view. A massive single-panel window now floods the event space with natural light and frames the river and the city's waterworks landmark beyond.
