New Scotland Yard
The rotating sign outside the Met's riverside headquarters on Victoria Embankment — the name the world reads as "Scotland Yard."
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The Metropolitan Police's headquarters since October 2016, in the Curtis Green Building on Victoria Embankment. The "Scotland Yard" name is borrowed: it comes from Great Scotland Yard, the street where the public entrance to the force's original 1829 home at 4 Whitehall Place stood — a name that slowly became the whole force's nickname.
What to look for
- The rotating sign outside New Scotland Yard, which came to prominence outside an earlier Scotland Yard building.
- The Victoria Embankment frontage of the Curtis Green Building: the Met returned to the Embankment here in 2016 — the same riverside where it first took the 'New Scotland Yard' name in 1890 (it spent 1967–2016 inland at Broadway in Victoria).
- The Met's Crime Museum inside — the 'Black Museum,' founded 1874 — a collection of criminal memorabilia closed to the public.
A working police headquarters, not a museum you enter — the Crime Museum inside is closed to the public, so treat this as an exterior, riverside stop.
New Scotland Yard is one of 40 sights worth the detour in London, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the London pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in London
- British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.