Churchill War Rooms

Built beneath the Treasury building in the run-up to the Second World War, the Cabinet War Rooms became the secure, bomb-proof nerve centre from which Churchill and his War Cabinet directed Britain's war effort from 1939 to 1945. When the lights were switched off on 16 August 1945, the rooms were simply locked and left — maps still pinned with coloured thread marking troop positions, sugar cubes still on saucers — and that untouched quality is what makes a visit feel less like a museum and more like a time capsule.

The Cabinet Room, where Churchill chaired over 100 meetings of his War Cabinet, and the Map Room, staffed around the clock by officers tracking the war across every theatre, are the emotional core of the site. A hidden door beside a broom cupboard once concealed the Transatlantic Telephone Room, disguised as a toilet, from which Churchill spoke directly and securely to President Roosevelt.