What is The Little Museum of the World? The Little Museum is a museum for building Peace.

Stepping inside, you are transported into an Aladdin’s Cave of countless bright and curious objects stacked from the floor to the ceiling that tell something about the story of life on Earth and our own human history…

There are literally thousands of objects in the tiniest museum you’re likely to have ever visited. One room is devoted to how life on Earth began, including stromatolites from 3.9 billion years ago, which are the first record we have of organic life. Christian Pilard has managed to amass an incredible fossil collection which includes a baby dinosaur and fossilised dinosaur eggs, as well as precious gems and amber that all work speak to the incredible scale of our biological and geological history. Stepping past one shelving unit, you pass through aeons of time, your journey illuminated by the expert commentary of the founder, Christian Pilard, as well as spoken explanations found on the Little Museum app. The message you will hear will weave together a story which allows us to reflect on the incredible newness of our own species, as we have emerged, in evolutionary terms, within the blink of an eye.

With objects from prehistory, such as tools, axes, flint heads, and shards of pottery from various anthropological and palaeolithic groups across the world, you can see firsthand how humans technologised their landscapes, and managed to establish a foothold against the immensity of time.

Within the second room, you take a quantum leap forward to the 19th and 20th Century. It is dizzying to conceive that there are just 60 years or so from the Wright Brothers first taking flight on their Kitty Hawk, to Yuri Gargarin orbiting our planet, and Neil Armstrong taking mankind’s giant leap onto the surface of our moon.

There are an incredible array of objects which speak to these moments of scientific and technological innovation, including fragments of the parachute that dropped the Apollo 11 crew back to Earth, and signed photos and artifacts from a galaxy of astronauts and aviators, including an Aeropostale envelope transported by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, who serves as a major philosophical influence on the Little Museum’s collection and ethos.

While a visitor can get lost for hours amongst the countless objects in this time capsule of history, as Saint-Exupery propounds, “It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly..what is essential is invisible to the eye.” And what is invisible amongst these objects is the shared compassion, bravery, and empathy that underpins the brilliant achievements of our Kind; the other side of this story, one which we are all too often reminded when viewing the news, are objects that symbolise the worst excesses of human nature: the chains of slavery, the barbed-wire of the concentration camps, the record books of Apartheid.

Placing these moments against the backdrop of the immensity of time can give us pause to see our beliefs in a more nuanced way; we can recognise, with the benefit of hindsight, how shortsighted some of our prejudices can be; by doing so, we are reminded of our instincts towards Peace and companionship which will be the means of rescuing us from a future that can appear to be rather pessimistic.

The objects that Christian has gathered also speak to the beauty and wonder of the planet, and remind us of our duty to preserve this beautiful world for ourselves and the other species with which we cohabit Planet Earth. You will walk away from the Little Museum with a lot more perspective on the gift of life with which we have all been blessed.