I’m on a quest to find the best private VIP experiences in London, so I jumped at the chance to join a private tour of the British Museum. For 33 pounds for adults or 16.50 pounds for kids, you can visit the museum for a little more than an hour before it opens, joined by a private guide with deep knowledge of your area of the museum. This tour is called an out-of-hours guided tour, because it takes place outside of normal opening hours. Read on for everything you need to know about the best private British Museum tour available.
Tours begin at 8:50 am and last until the museum doors open at 10 am, and they aren’t offered every day. The museum offers different tours, including ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, life and death in ancient Egypt, an intro to the British Museum, and ancient China. I would have loved to do ancient Greece because we will head to Greece later on our current trip. Imagine – you can wander through the Parthenon marbles alone except for a highly-knowledgable guide and perhaps a small group of other lucky visitors. Sadly, intro to ancient Greece wasn’t available during our time in London. We happily took the ancient Egypt introductory tour instead.
The tour starts in front of the gates of the British Museum, with good signage indicating where to go for the out-of-hours tours. A quick check in process and bag check let us through the gates, where a security guard escorted us inside to our guide.
Our leader was less of a gregarious tour guide and more of a private expert guide who clearly had extensive knowledge about ancient Egypt. He led us straight to the ancient Egypt rooms, where he explained the statues we were seeing, the graffiti etched in along with the carvings, and a ton of interesting facts like how they made the stone so hard – it’s a mix of stone and other things like arsenic. We covered 3000 years of human history in just a few minutes, and he kept it interesting for our entire group. The private group we visited with was just about 15 people, but the groups can go as large as 30. Ours was the perfect size to see and hear everything and have plenty of space to take great pictures.
My favorite part of the entire tour was the roughly 10 minutes at the end of the tour when we settled in front of the groundbreaking Rosetta Stone. If you’ve ever tried to visit one of the world’s treasures like this, you know how many people are pressing to get close – you can’t get a good photo, you can’t take a moment to actually absorb what you’re seeing, and if you have any sense of anxiety at all, you’ll be desperate to move away quickly. In comparison, the private out-of-hours tours shows you the world’s oldest artifacts up close and personally. I absolutely loved it.
As the tour concluded, our guide suggested that we beeline to the Egyptian mummies, which he said would get chaotic a mere 10 minutes after the museum opened. He offered to accompany us there, and took us to his favorite find, the remains of a young man who had been stabbed and buried. Not truly a mummy because he wasn’t intentionally preserved, “Ginger” as he is often called was naturally mummified and still sports red hair, skin, and even fingernails.
We marveled at the other mummies, including the mummy of Katebet, before moving on to other rooms. This is the benefit that you don’t hear about when you’re doing a before-hours private tour of the British Museum…you are already deep in the museum when the doors open, which means that you can easily have another 10 or 15 minutes to visit additional areas of the museum with no one else in sight. We chose the ancient Greece and ancient Rome rooms, which we had entirely to ourselves. It was truly magical to wander through these ancient civilizations without a crowd. We found that the docents in these rooms were super friendly and able to share a lot of knowledge about their extensive collection – it was almost like a private mini tour in the different rooms.
In the hour after our tour ended, we explored the ancient Greek and Roman rooms, the clock and watch room (this was way more interesting than I was expecting!), and the beautiful Samurai armor on the 5th floor. We had wanted to see one of the special exhibits but didn’t realize these required separate, paid tickets and were sold out for the day of our visit.
Overall, we stayed until just after 11 am (an hour after opening time) and when we were left, there was already a huge number of people in the main floor galleries.
British Museum Private Tour with Kids
We visited the museum with our two boys, ages 10 and almost-8. In addition to doing our small group tour, I brought our Mission: London book with us, which was an unexpected hit on this trip. There are challenges in and around major sites in London, including the British Museum, and it pushed us to explore things we never would have seen otherwise. I also bought the Rome version and we loved that one as well.
The boys generally enjoyed and stayed engaged during the tour. There was a lot of ancient history covered, and at times it was too much for our younger son, but he did stay interested for at least a short time. My older son had a great experience and was patient enough to wait until the end for the Rosetta Stone, which he was most excited about.
We were one of about 4 families in our small group, so I think this was a perfect option for families wanting a guide to the vast collection housed in the British Museum. Because it wasn’t one of the larger groups, my younger son and I could hang back a bit when he was getting bored to prevent him from distracting the other visitors. He and I played I Spy and other quiet games until he could tune back into the tour.
What to Bring to the British Museum
An out-of-hours tour of the British Museum requires a lot of walking, so wear comfortable clothes and shoes. I went with a travel-friendly top from Wayre, which I ended up loving because it doesn’t wrinkle, has a hidden zipper pocket, is quick-dry, stretchy, and stink-resistant. I wore it here with a skirt from Athleta, and in Rome, with matching shorts.
My shoes of choice on this trip were these Birkenstocks and they were comfortable even after hours of walking.
You will want to keep bags small, both for your own comfort and to follow British Museum rules. My favorite travel purse is this one, which has served me well through a half dozen countries. While you can bring water into the museum, you are not permitted to eat or drink in the galleries. Save that for the atriums and restaurants dotted throughout the museum.
Check the full list of prohibited items here.
Is a Private VIP Tour of the British Museum Worth It?
Though the iconic British Museum is free for all visitors, paying 100 pounds for our family of four to join just a few other groups for private access to one of the largest museums in the world was absolutely worth it. Hands-down, it was the best way to see and experience the museum’s incredible offerings, and I highly recommend it. Not only did we get up close, uninterrupted access to to famous artifacts like the ancient Rosetta Stone, but we fast-tracked our way into other museum exhibits even after the tour ended and had at least another 15 minutes in Britain’s most visited museum with no one else around. Though it wasn’t absolutely private (as in, only our family), it felt very much like a VIP experience for a highly reasonable price. One of the best private experiences we have had, and we’ve been lucky enough to do many of them!
If you’re planning a museum visit, take a peek at the out-of-hours options for your dates and book your tour directly on the British Museum website.
