Museums are perfect for meeting friends, but watch out - you might learn something, too

Ever wandered around a museum in a slightly aimless way, spending more mental effort on, say, the caption than the artworks? Or, frankly, chatting to your friend? Centrally heated, usually free and very often furnished with nice big sofas and coffee shops, museums and galleries can be very friendly places indeed. Another point is that they are about the only cultural institutions you can visit with a baby or, indeed, a hangover, in tow. You don't even have to know much. If you don't feel like keen analysis, no one will give two hoots.

This is, of course, one of the reasons they are such perfect sponsorship vehicles. Merchant banks, legal firms and other wealthy institutions can satisfy their sponsorship requirements safe in the knowledge that their VIP guests will not have to panic about coming out with some apposite, Mark Lawsonesque commentary at a private view. Meanwhile, networking, flirting, drinking and canape scoffing can go on quite happily. This might not be the case if the bank was sponsoring, say, Ibsen's Pillars of the Community. Two and a half hours of Ibsen, or a couple of Monet water-lilies; which one is easier to busk?

Some museum staff know this. Hedley Swain, from the Museum of London, took me around the new Medieval London exhibit. Swain, whose very nomenclature inspires thoughts of his speciality (early London history), has given much consideration to the average museum punter. "They are lazy," he says mournfully. "They just wander about." Well, yes, Mr Swain, we do. Sometimes we just can't help it. "In one of our galleries, we counted up all the printed material on the walls and worked out that it would take a visitor 90 minutes to read it all. Then we timed people going round. Do you know how many minutes the average visitor spent in that gallery? Three!"

And so Medieval London is attempting to ring, or possibly wring, changes to visitor behaviour. Swain, a disciple of the revolutionary Simon Thurley, who brought Spry Crisp 'n Dry (Tudor-style) into the kitchens at Hampton Court, thinks there is no point in doing the gig unless you force some form of interaction between display and visitor.

The gallery now has a soundtrack naming victims of the Black Death (half of the population of London perished in 18 months), funny computer packages (become an eight-year-old and wee out of a window) and very real exhibits (a silver necklace; a child's bootee; a rib from a vaulted hall built in King Alfred's day). It is special, but not for specialists. "Museums should not be places of expertise," says Swain. "They should be places where you have your interest fired."

One of the new stories is the discovery of Saxon London. "When the Romans left, the whole of the city was abandoned. The next stage was a mystery. Only recently, we discovered Saxon remains under Covent Garden." As Swain says, simply reading the London Underground map should have given it away.

"We never thought about Aldwych, but Aldwych means the old mooring point, and we should have realised it was because the Saxons liked to drag their boats up on to the Strand, which was at that time a gently inclined beach." You see? Even 7th-century Lundenwic was focused on the vagaries of public transport.

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