Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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29 July 2009

See the V&A Cast Courts

For London's bigger museums, your author likes to pick key parts which are particularly interesting. After all, you can rarely see all the exhibits in one visit. Today's idea isn't a single item, however, but a pair of rooms in one of the great museums, the Victoria and Albert.


The Cast Courts are amazing, and are a testament to the notion that you don't have to sail around the world stealing treasures, or even house originals, to be an interesting and enlightening museum space. For all the exhibits here, whilst they might seem like great architectural and sculptural masterpieces, are in fact plaster casts of the originals.

As such, many have even stood the test of time and pollution better than many originals and are placed here together, in a space which opened in 1873, and still remains just as interesting. The pair of absolutely amazing halls don't have the draw of the likes of the Parthenon Marbles, but are, in your author's humble opinion, equally as interesting. Where else can you see Michelangelo's David alongside the pulpit from Pisa Cathedral, and a portal Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Nowhere...

For more information on the Cast Courts, click here.

Click here to see the location on a map.

^Picture from VeronikaB under Creative Commons^

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