The Freud Museum in London

London is home to several globally renowned museums and galleries. Natural History Museum, National Gallery, Science Museum, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and Freud Museum are some of the most visited museums in England. The Freud Museum in London was opened in the year 1986. It is one the most popular London attractions. The museum is located in Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead. The museum features Freud family memorabilia, papers, books, couches and antiquities. The museum is open to public only five days a week on Wednesday to Sunday from 12:00pm to 5:00pm BST.

History
The Nazi captured Austria in the year 1938. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, moved to London just after the invasion. He moved to Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead with his family, which is now where the Freud Museum stands. Freud expired the same year as he was in his eighties. The Freuds shifted all their belongings like their furniture, Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, Beidermeier chests, tables and cupboards. The museum’s collection includes Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Oriental antiques and a portrait of Freud by the great Salvador Dali. The museum is also an active member of London Museums of Health & Medicine.
The Freud Museum in London is not the “only Freud Museum” in the world. There is another Freud Museum in Vienna and the most recent in Pribor, Czech Republic. The Freud Museum in Pribor, was opened by the Czech president Václav Klaus and four of Freud's great-grandsons.  The museum is dedicated to Sigmund Freud.

The museum is also filled with memoirs of Anna, his daughter. Anna lived there for more than 40 years and developed and studied psychoanalysis.  She died in 1982 and before that she had done everything imaginable to pay her tributes to her dad, Sigmund Freud by transforming the house into the Freud Museum.

What is there in Freud Museum to be explored?

• Freud’s psychoanalytic couch where Sigmund Freud’s patients used to sprawl.
• Freud’s Library which contains Freud’s favourite authors including Shakespeare, Heine, Multatuli, Goethe and Anatole France. The library also includes books on literature, philosophy, art, psychology, medicine, history and psychoanalysis.
• There are classic pictures collected by Freud himself on display too. They are the Riddle of the Sphinx and The lesson of Dr Charcot Oedipus
• Photographs on the walls include famous people like Martha Freud (Sigmund Freud’s wife), Lou Andreas-Salomé, Maria Bonaparte (Princess), Ernst Von Fleischl and Yvette Guilbert.
• Freud’s study also displays antiques from ancient Rome, Egypt, Orient and Greece. Collecting antiquities from all over the world was Freud’s second habit only after his addiction to cigars.

Dining Room
The Dining Room has Austrian country furniture and is full of paintings of the alpine region where Freud used to spend most of his holidays.

Conservatory
The Conservatory is at the backside of the building which was earlier a terrace or veranda. The museum shop is located here now.

Anna Freud Room
Anna Freud’s Room is located on the first floor. One can look at her work, her analytic couch, and also memoirs of her assistant Dorothy Burlingham.

Exhibition Room
The Exhibition Room is where the museum hosts exhibitions on contemporary art.

Video Room
There is a video room in the Freud Museum where the visitors can view video clips of the Freuds’ life and history.

Garden
The garden has all the plants Freud loved during the stages of his life. It has terracotta flower pot, hortense, roses, clematis, almond trees, curved bench and tables strategically placed in the shade. There also stands the pine tree which was knee-high at the time when Anna Freud had planted it.

Collections
The museum contains the finest antiques Freud’s house displayed. One can experience the magnificent carpets, Renaissance works of art and hidden collections like family photographs. The museum has 2,000 antiques in display.

Exhibitions
The Freud Museum can be hired for meetings, formal dinners and for filming. Art Exhibitions take place there every now and then.

Nearest Tube Stations
The nearest tube stations are Finchley Road (Jubilee & Metropolitan line), Swiss Cottage Tube and Hampstead Tube.

Admission Fee
The admission fee is £3.00 for adults and there is concession of £1.50 for children under 12.

At the Freud Museum one can experience Sigmund Freud’s life intimately. Many psychoanalysis students come to the Freud Museum to learn from the master.