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The Imperial War Museum
The Imperial War Museum is a museum in London featuring military vehicles, weapons, war memorabilia, a library, a photographic archive, and an art collection of 20th century and later conflicts, especially those involving Britain. The Museum also has several other branches in the United Kingdom: The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms (Located in the bunker which was an operational nerve centre of the British government during World War 2); The HMS Belfast; The Imperial War Museum Duxford and The Imperial War Museum Manchester.
Items in the Museum are not necessarily British, and include other nations at war at the time, primarily France, the United States, Germany, Italy and Russia. The grandeur of its collection has transformed the museum into an archive and art museum as well.
Outside the main entrance of the museum are mounted two 15" naval guns from former Royal Navy warships. The left-hand gun was mounted in HMS Ramillies, a Revenge-class battleship from 1916 to 1941. The right-hand gun was mounted in another Revenge-class battleship, HMS Resolution from 1915 to 1938, and then in the monitor HMS Roberts where it took part in the D-Day bombardments.
There is a special exhibit devoted to the World War II Holocaust showcasing its horrors and brutality. The exhibit which was opened on D-Day (June 6, 2000, it was in part funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund).
The Imperial War Museum was the Crystal Palace located atop Sydenham Hill. The Museum was founded there in 1917 to commemorate those who had died in World War I (which was still being fought at the time). When that building burned down on November 30, 1936, a new location had to be found, and a building in Lambeth was settled on. That building, designed by Sydney Smirke, had originally been a psychiatric hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital (otherwise known as "Bedlam") located in St. George's Fields. In 1939, the Museum began including things relating to WWII, and then finally in 1953 it began its current policy of including memorabilia from all modern British conflicts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_War_Museum)
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