Visiting the Bank of England museum

Even though I used to work 10 minutes away from it for many years, I have never thought of visiting the Bank of England museum in London. Last year when I was in town, I finally dropped in for a visit. The Bank of England building is quite big, and the museum entrance is located at the back of the main building. It isn't signposted very well, you'll only see a fairly small obscure sign when you arrive outside.

Arriving at the museum

The museum was opened in 1988 by our late Queen, and is by the Bank tube (underground) station. Getting there is very easy, and entrance is free!!! You don't have to book in advance, just walk in.

Upon entering the building, you have to go through an airport like security check at the main entrance. A little anecdote. I dropped my travel card here during the security search, and didn't realise it until the next day after I had left London. I called up the museum immediately as the card was linked to my bank account for auto top up. They came back to me a day later confirming they had found my card and offered to send it back to me. I had planned to cancel my card after my London trip so asked them to cut it up and throw it away for me instead. The point of this story, is to show how impressed I was with their service. Most lost and found offices will rarely get back to you, let alone offer to send items back to you.

History and building

The Bank of England was established in 1694 a few doors down the road and moved to this spot in 1734. Over the next century, it expanded to the neighbouring buildings and now occupies a 3.5 acre site in central London. The first part of the museum talks about the Bank's history and architecture and the work it used to do. It's located in a reconstructed building of the old Bank Stock Office. The original Stock Office was built in the early 18th century but was knocked down in the 20th century when they rebuilt the entire Bank.

There are some interesting artefacts on display here like this coin weighing machine from 1842. Coins were made from gold or silver in the old days and their weight had to be exact otherwise they might be fake. This machine could weigh 2500 coins in an hour compared 1000 using hand scales.

The Bank of England is most famous for its secure underground gold vault (more on that in a moment). Here they have a little activity called Crack the Code. Visitors can try to open a safe by answering three questions correctly. Each answer will give you a code.

The code is used to open the safe where we can get a ticket to claim our price	The prize is a post card of the gold vault, nothing too valuable, but it was fun

The Banknote gallery

The Banknote Gallery was my favourite section, it was very interesting	I learnt about the different stages of making money	Most of the notes from yester year were new to me

Nowadays, our banknotes are made of polymer, a type of thin plastic. Old or damaged notes are recycled, made into plastic pellets and then repurposed for useful items such as this storage box. I asked at the gift shop to see if they sold any items made by recycled notes. I thought it would be really cool if I could buy something, even a ruler made from money. Sadly they didn't. I bet the products wouldn be very popular if they did.

The Rotunda

The next section is the Rotunda. The original 18th century Rotunda was the main stock trading area, but that was knocked down in the 20th century along with the Stock Office. They managed to keep the original caryatids (female statues) and put them on display when this Rotunda was reconstructed. There are two most famous features at the Rotunda. The first is the spectacular neo classical design dome.

Holding £1.2m in my hand

The second is this...... a real solid gold bar

Yes, I'm not joking, I really did hold £1.2m in my hand, that's USD1.68m!! This was the value of the gold bar when I visited in November 2025. It is now worth £1.35m/USD1.88m in January 2026. Visitors to the museum can touch and feel a 99.79% real gold bar that weighs nearly 13 kg. It's locked inside a box in the Rotunda, and you can put your hand through the hole in the front and try to lift it. It was heavy!!!

The Bank of England gold vault holds 400 thousand bars of gold, each like the one I just held. Imagine how much it's worth... 400000 x £1.35m.... you do the maths. Not all of it is owned by the Bank of England. Most of them are owned by other central banks and financial institutions. The Bank of England just keeps it safe for them in the very secure underground vault. For obvious reasons, visitors are not allowed to see the gold vault, all we could see was this big poster of it.

Talking of gold bars in a vault. Recently, a lovely friend on Hive sent me a Christmas package. Inside was a puzzle with bars of gold in a safe. We had a lot of fun with the kids playing with it over Christmas and that is worth more than gold! Thank you my friend!

Afterthought

Visiting the Bank of England museum is a great way to spend a few hours in London. It is easily accessible by public transport. It's free and you don't have to book, just rock up when you have a couple of hours to spare in your itinerary. And most important of all, you get bragging rights to say you have held a real gold bar in your hand.

And as an added insider bonus. After your visit, walk five minutes down the road to One New Change. Take the elevator up to the 6th floor public terrace, and you'll get an amazing view of St Paul's Cathedral. It's free as well. What's not to love about London 🇬🇧 ❤️