Freud Museum

Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens NW3
020 7435 2002; www.freud.org.uk

In a perilous last-ditch flight from the Nazis, Sigmund Freud arrived in London with his family in 1938, moving into the substantial red brick house in Hampstead which he predicted would be "his last address on this planet." The following year he died of cancer of the throat. This, the most atmospheric of all London museums, is strangely little known. At its heart is Freud's own study and consulting room, drawing its peculiar aura of enchantment from his famous collection of antiquities in bronze, stone, and terracotta, sent on from Vienna, and enriched by the colour and texture of the carpets and hangings. Most magnificent of these is the five-sided deep-red-and-blue rug, woven by one of the tribal groups of the Qashqai confederacy of Western Iran, draped over the couch employed by Freud for his analyses. Dream on.

Fiona MacCarthy
Fiona MacCarthy is a cultural historian and author of biographies of Eric Gill and William Morris.