Alfred Hitchcock’s Favourite Museum

An authentic cockney, Alfred Hitchcock never forgot the city where he was born and raised - London, experts say, is the subtext of his films, even the American ones. From Westminster to Charing Cross to the British Museum, there are many places throughout the British capital that he chose as locations for his film. The director sought to offer both the beautiful and ugly sides of the city, like a prism projecting a thousand faces of good and evil. But there was one “invisible” place that, for the author of Psycho, was an endless source of inspiration - the Black Museum, the crime museum of Scotland Yard, which the director visited regularly in search of inspiration and macabre details. Opened in 1875, the Black Museum hosts a blood-thirsty collection of exhibits - from Jack the Ripper to Doctor Crippen, the grim soul of London is narrated by objects that would drive any horror fan wild. There are the false De Beers diamonds and the stove used by serial killer Dennis Nilsen to eliminate the remains of his victims, the umbrella used to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov and the pistol used by Edward Oxford in attempting to kill Queen Victoria. Top of the bottom - the chilling letter From Hell written by Jack the Ripper. Sadly, the museum is no longer open to the public - it is exclusively used for educating police and forensic scientists.