These are the best UK museums according to Lonely Planet

British Museum named very best UK museum

Oct 12, 2020

Lonely Planet has named the 500 most unmissable travel destinations from around the world - and 9 UK museums make the list.

No other country has as many entries on the new countdown as the UK, which has 34 in total. Incredibly, 1 in 4 of the British destinations is a museum. It’s a massive sign of how our museums are some of the most spectacular on the planet.

The top 500 comes from Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List, a new edition of their stunning coffee table book which is the definitive wish-list of the 500 most thrilling, memorable and interesting travel experiences in the world – ranked in order of brilliance.

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While the Lake District was the top entry from the British Isles, the second highest was the British Museum, coming in at number 56. It beat some of the world’s most iconic sights including the Eiffel Tower, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia and China’s Terracotta Warriors.

But what were the other UK museums to make the the top 500? While there were other big names as you’d expect, a number of smaller and less well known venues made the cut too. Here are all the UK museums on that feature in Lonely Planet’s countdown:

The British Museum - No. 56

Victoria and Albert Museum - No. 170

London’s V&A Museum will slash 10% of jobs due to the financial impact of the pandemic. ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Bath’s Roman Baths - No. 267

The Great Bath, Roman Baths, City of Bath, England by David McKelvey is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Tower of London - No. 283

Tate Modern - No. 340

Tate Modern exterior from the North Bank. Photo credit: Tate Photography

Natural History Museum - No.349

Titanic Belfast - No. 398

"Titanic Belfast" by Nico Kaiser is licensed with CC BY 2.0.

St Fagans National History Museum - No. 347

Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum - No. 458

In case you were wondering, Petra in Jordan took the global top spot, followed by the Galápagos Islands and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia.

Lonely Planet’s VP of Print Publishing, Piers Pickard, said: “After seven months of staying at home, now’s the perfect time to start thinking about where and how to travel once normality returns. In putting together this book, we were excited by changes in both the ‘where’ and the ‘how’. We added 200 new entries into our list of the world’s Top 500. And we were both surprised and reassured by just how many of the Top 500 are working hard to create more sustainable visitor experiences.”

So what do you think of the museums on the list? What do you think they missed out that should have been there? And which ones have you visited? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

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