London Other Museums In The South Bank

DESIGN MUSEUM. Housed in an arresting Art Deco riverfront building, this contemporary museum’s installations fit right with its cutting-edge surroundings. Temporary exhibitions cover anything from avant-garde furniture and big-name graphic designers to as-yet-unseen fashions and industrial design and architecture. Everyone will enjoy the Interaction Space on the top floor, which includes a colorful variety of household items and a bay of vintage video games that inspired contemporary gaming. The Museum Café on the first floor serves sweet treats that are as aesthetically pleasing as anything you’ll find in the galleries. (28 Shad Thames, Butlers Wharf. Tower Hill or London Bridge. ☎020 7940 8783; www.designmuseum.org. Open daily 10am-5:45pm, last entry 5:15pm. Wheelchair-accessible. £8.50, concessions £5, under 12 free.)

OLD OPERATING THEATRE AND HERB GARRET. Tucked into the loft of a 19th-century church, this is the oldest restored operating theater in the world. The surgeon’s chair and restraining straps appear to await their next patient. A fearsome array of saws and knives are the core of the exhibit on surgical history, accompanied by plenty of hearts, brains, lungs, and intestines in glass jars. There’s also a small display on Keats, who was a student here. The neighboring herb garret smells heavenly, filled with herbs, spices, and other creatures that were used by the hospital apothecary to prepare medicines. A 1718 cure for venereal disease (notepads out), for example, instructs the afflicted to ingest garden snails and earthworms, cloves, wormwood, and juniper berries. (9A St. Thomas’s St. London Bridge. ☎020 7955 4791; www.thegarret.org.uk. Open daily 10:30am-4:45pm. £5.50, concessions £4.45, children £3.25, families £13.80.)