Stand on the prime meridian line
Greenwich is known across the world as the birthplace of Greenwich Mean Time, where all the world’s time zones are measured from. It’s where the new millennium was officially welcomed in, and world events have been officially marked in time for over 130 years.
One of the most exciting parts of a visit to the Royal Observatory is the chance to stand on the prime meridian line, with one foot in the east hemisphere, and one foot in the west hemisphere!
In the Meridian Courtyard you can also see the largest telescope in Britain and the seventh largest in the world, the Great Equatorial telescope. Its distinctive onion shape allows it to see almost any part of the night sky, and it has a huge 28-inch lens, weighing over 200lbs!
London’s original observatory
Flamsteed House was the original observatory building at Greenwich, designed by world-renowned architect Christopher Wren in 1675. Today it has been restored as an award-winning museum, dedicated to exploring the history of astronomy.
Explore inside the house to visit the striking Octagon Room, designed for Astronomers to sit and watch the sky, observing comets, eclipses and the movement of the planets. See the Astronomer Royals’ apartments, where astronomers, appointed by the Royal Family to draw a map of the cosmos, have lived and worked for hundreds of years. And outside the house, admire the iconic Time Ball, one of the world’s ‘time-keeping icons’.
Many artefacts and original pieces of equipment that were used to expand our knowledge of space and time are on display throughout Flamsteed House today. Gaze through historic telescopes, visit the planetarium to touch a 4.5 billion year old meteorite, and visit the summerhouse to see the spectacular Camera Obscura, which projects an image of the Greenwich skyline.