Surveyed
Architect John Soane designed the Bank of England and lived at 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, filling the house with antiquities, paintings and architectural fragments over four decades. He arranged for an Act of Parliament to convert the house into a museum on his death, specifically to stop his estranged son inheriting the collection, and the trustees have kept the rooms arranged as Soane left them in 1837. The basement crypt holds the alabaster Sarcophagus of Seti I, bought in 1824 after the British Museum turned it down. Upstairs, the Picture Room uses hinged panels to display works by Hogarth and Canaletto in a fraction of the wall space they would otherwise need. Only 90 visitors are allowed inside at a time, and entry remains free.