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British Museum on New Year's Day - a good idea?

Hi! We will be in London over the New Year's holiday and are looking for things to do on New Year's Day. I understand the British Museum is open, but is it likely to be less crowded or more crowded because of the holiday? We've been before in summer when it was quite packed, so that's all I have to compare it to.

Posted by
28247 posts

A museum staffer told me the museum is busiest on weekends and holidays. I have no idea whether New Year's Day will follow that pattern. In my experience the upper floor is always less crowded than the ground floor

Posted by
1306 posts

My feeling is that it might be relatively quiet. It's not a day when many British people would think to come into town for a museum.

Public transport may be limited. A Sunday service on many routes? There should be enough to get around most of London in a rudimentary fashion.

It depends on how many visitors (tourists) there are in central London. I tried looking for "how busy is it" stats using Google Maps, but that doesn't seem to have anything in the way of historical information. Museum stats are still just recovering in accuracy after COVID anyway.

Definitely put it on your list. I don't think it will be as busy as the day you saw it in summer.

Posted by
181 posts

My guess, and it’s no more than that, is it will take pretty quiet, particularly in the morning.

Posted by
5550 posts

I would also guess that it would likely be fairly quiet. New Years Day, whilst a holiday, is for most people a day to recover from the festivities of the night before (unless you're like me who doesn't bother to celebrate NYE).