Set in a surviving Georgian sugar warehouse on West India Quay, right across the water from the Canary Wharf towers, this free museum tells the story of London as a port — from Roman trade and the building of the great docks to the slave-trade wealth that funded them, the Blitz, and the docklands' collapse and reinvention as a financial district.
The galleries are rich and unhurried: a reconstructed Victorian "Sailortown" of dark alleys, displays on the West India Company, and an unflinching section on London, sugar, and slavery. It is the natural counterpart to the glass towers outside, explaining how the whole area came to be. Allow a couple of hours, and the riverside warehouses make a good lunch stop afterwards.