Royal Museums Greenwich Images
Welcome to Royal Museums Greenwich Images: the world's greatest source of historical maritime images and home to renowned collections from our sites which include the National Maritime Museum, Royal Observatory, Queen’s House and the clipper ship Cutty Sark.
Our exceptional collections of over 4 million objects reach across continents, cultural divides, tumultuous seas and cosmic voids. Search, license and instantly download film footage and high-quality images of paintings, prints and drawings, maps and charts, scientific instruments, astrophotography, ship plans, historic photographs, manuscripts, ship models, antiquities and uniforms.
Our expert team is on hand to help in finding the right image or film footage for your project. Contact us images@rmg.co.uk and subscribe to our newsletter for our latest news and themed image selections.
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Inspired by our collection? Discover our brand licensing programme and develop fantastic contemporary products endorsed by our world-renowned museum.
Services
The images we have online represent a fraction of the Museum’s collection. While new images are uploaded regularly, if a suitable high-quality image is not available to supply, it is also possible to commission digitisation of almost any object in the Museum. Our professional photographic studio is able to carry out a range of photographic services, including bespoke photography and ship plan scanning.
Free image downloads
Royal Museums Greenwich supports education, scholarship and research by making available lower resolution JPEGs (72 dpi and 1280 pixels on the longest side) for instant download. As well as use for personal research, these images may be used for some educational purposes and scholarly publications, such as journals and academic theses.
Please click here to see the full list and terms of image uses.
Film footage
Our film archive is available for licensing. The growing collection features a diverse selection of archive footage sourced from documentaries, amateur and contemporary aerial footage of the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site. We also exclusively license the unique film archive by the mariner and photographer Alan Villiers, digitised films detailing sailing ships from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Our team can assist with footage research. Contact images@rmg.co.uk to license a clip or full film.
Culturally sensitive images
The breadth and historical nature of our collection, particularly relating to naval and maritime activity, spans a wide range of historical subjects and contemporary issues, often connecting the two. Users may find some historic images difficult and upsetting, however, they provide an essential resource for contextualising important and often disturbing episodes in global history.
Every licence supports the work of Royal Museums Greenwich