Royal Armouries

The origins of the Royal Armouries lie in the Middle Ages: its core collection originated in the nation’s working arsenal and was assembled over many centuries at the Tower of London.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, selected items were arranged for display to visitors, making the Royal Armouries heir to one of the oldest deliberately created visitor attractions in the country.

The collection of about 75,000 objects is housed in the Tower of London, Leeds, and Fort Nelson near Portsmouth. It has an active loans programme with approximately 2,700 objects on loan to other organisations.

Since 2005, the museum has also managed the Pattern Room collection of firearms, started in 1631 by Charles I, continued by the British Army, and now part of the collection in the National Firearms Centre.

Royal Armouries was established in its present form by the National Heritage Act (1983) and is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It receives nearly 2 million visitors a year across the three sites, who, except at the Tower of London, visit for free.