Imperial War Museum

You are approaching a building with a complicated past. Before it became a memorial to the experiences of modern war, these grounds were home to the Bethlem Royal Hospital. This institution was the famous asylum known as Bedlam, a name that became synonymous with chaos and disorder. When you look at the structure today, you are seeing the central portion of that nineteenth-century psychiatric facility, which was repurposed for the museum in 1936. It remains a poignant irony that a site once dedicated to the treatment of mental distress now houses the artifacts of humanity's most violent conflicts.