We Visit The Soane Museum

The Soane Museum is small and crowed, so you have to wait in line to enter. Fortunately, the staff helpfully provide you with umbrellas to keep off the rain! Once inside, no photography is allowed, so the best you get in this post is a picture of the relatively uninteresting exterior ornamented by the lovely ladies waiting to enter.

We visited Sir John Soane's Museum today--a quirky little place consisting of the home and collection of a famous London architect who died in 1837 and left his estate to the nation. Soane was a great architect, no doubt, his most famous commission being the Bank of England, but a passionate teacher. He travelled around the world collecting examples of statues and vases and wall carvings from the ancient world to teach his students how to design architecture in the classical way and to convince his clients that they, too, ought to aim to outdo the monuments of the Romans in their construction. Among the more curious parts of his collecting was a paint chip from Pompeii, which he purloined from the ruins and brought back to England to introduce the color to London. His house and collection are just as he left them, giving a rare and very up close look at some amazing artifacts from a time when artificacts were available to the highest bidder. Perhaps his greatest acquisition was the sarcophogus of Pharaoh Seti I, dating back to 1340 B.C! The little girls didn't get much out of it, but Olivia found a few things fascinating, and Mom and Dad liked it very much, despite the many distractions it poses as one hugs Cecily close to prevent her from touching the many treasures within easy reach in the narrow, crowded hallways.