The Site
The museum was officially established in 1934 within the 200 acres (0.81 km2) of Greenwich Royal Park in the buildings formerly occupied by the Royal Hospital School, before it moved to Holbrook in Suffolk. These buildings had previously been occupied by the Royal Naval Asylum before it was incorporated into the Greenwich Royal Hospital School. It includes the Queen's House (part of the historic park-and-palace landscape of "Maritime Greenwich", which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997) and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, until 1948 the home of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
The gardens immediately to the north of the museum were reinstated in the late 1870s following construction of the cut-and-cover tunnel between Greenwich and Maze Hill stations. The tunnel comprised part of the final section of the London and Greenwich Railway and opened in 1878.
Flamsteed House (1675–76), the original part of the Royal Observatory, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and was the first purpose-built scientific research facility in Britain.
In 1953, the Old Royal Observatory became part of the Museum. Flamsteed House, was first opened for visitors by Queen Elizabeth II in 1960.
The 17th-century Queen’s House, an early classical building designed by Inigo Jones, is the keystone of the historic "park and palace" landscape of maritime Greenwich.
All the Museum buildings have been subsequently upgraded. A full redevelopment of the main galleries, centring on what is now the Neptune Court, and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, was completed in 1999.
The Queen's House was refurbished in 2001 to become the heart of displays of art from the Museum's collection.
In May 2007 a major capital project, "Time and Space", opened up the entire Royal Observatory site for the benefit of visitors. The £16 million transformation features three new modern astronomy galleries, four new time galleries, facilities for collections conservation and research, a learning centre and a 120-seat planetarium (named for the major donor, Peter Harrison) Peter Harrison Planetarium designed to introduce the world beyond the night sky.
In 2008, the museum announced that Israeli shipping magnate Sammy Ofer, had donated £20m to the museum for a new gallery.
Read more about this topic: National Maritime Museum
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