Visit America’s National Churchill Museum

America’s National Churchill Museum (ANCM) is located on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in the United States.

The NCM is the historic site where Winston Churchill gave one of his most famous speeches. On 5 March 1946, at the invitation of President Harry Truman, Churchill addressed the crowd and presented the speech he knew as the ‘Sinews of Peace’ speech, which later became known for a phrase that he used: ‘Iron Curtain’.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent…”

The famous phrase of Churchill’s that gave his speech its colloquial name was, ‘An Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent,’ which in essence marked the beginning of the Cold War between the west and the (now former) Soviet Union. Churchill’s speech has forever linked Fulton and Westminster College with Winston Churchill.

See more on Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech here.

In the 1960s Westminster College marked the twentieth anniversary of Churchill’s visit by moving from London to Fulton a Christopher Wren-designed church that had been damaged in WWII by German bombers during the London Blitz. This Church, St. Mary the Virgin Aldermanbury, had stood in London since 1677 when it replaced an earlier structure that had sat on the same site since the 12th century. The damaged church of St Mary was rebuilt brick-by-brick to Wren’s original specifications.

Beneath this Church is the National Churchill Museum itself which, through the imaginative and innovative use of technology, brings to life the story of Winston Churchill and the world he knew. Recently rebuilt from the ground up, the new displays and the permanent exhibition, together with a host of associated historical and cultural activities that support it, was recognised by the United States Congress as America’s permanent tribute to this great man and formally designated as America’s National Churchill Museum. View the speech from the U.S. House of Representatives here.