Bank of England Museum reopens Banknote Gallery
If you plan on going to London in the near future, you can now visit the Banknote Gallery of the Bank of England Museum. The gallery has been completely refurbished and its opening today coincides with the launch of the new and first polymer 5-pound banknote next week.
Historic notes, sketches and unique banknote artwork, printing plates and test prints will all be on display.
In the new gallery you can:
- Discover the origins of paper money in ancient China, and how the ‘running cash’ notes of sixteenth-century Britain became the precursors to our modern banknotes.
- Find out the story behind the ‘Inimitable Note’ competition: a quest at the beginning of the 1800s to create a banknote that couldn’t be copied, and the many intricate and beautiful designs that were the result.
- Explore the complex designs that make banknotes difficult to counterfeit, and how cutting-edge technology is used to create the Bank of England’s newest note, the polymer £5.
- Trace the lifecycle of your banknotes from initial design and manufacture to destruction and recycling.
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