The lights of the London skyline glitter along the Thames as evening falls, marking the beginning of another night in one of the world’s great cultural capitals. London in 2012 was a city transformed by the Olympic Games, its cultural institutions revitalised and its global profile elevated. But the city’s cultural life extends far beyond any single event. The West End theatres draw crowds every night with performances ranging from Shakespeare to the latest Broadway transfers. The British Museum houses treasures spanning the full arc of human civilisation. The Tate Modern offers contemporary art inside a converted power station on the South Bank. Street art decorates the walls of Shoreditch and Brick Lane. Galleries in Mayfair and Cork Street exhibit works by both old masters and emerging talents.
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The National Gallery, the British Museum, and the Free Museums
London’s major museums offer free entry to their permanent collections, a policy that makes world-class art accessible to everyone regardless of budget. The British Museum in Bloomsbury holds more than 8 million works spanning the history of human civilisation from the earliest stone tools to the present day. The Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, attracts a permanent crowd in the Enlightenment Gallery. The Parthenon sculptures, known as the Elgin Marbles, fill a dedicated gallery that recreates the proportions of the Parthenon in Athens. The Egyptian mummies in the upstairs galleries are the most popular exhibits among children, who press their faces against the glass to see the wrapped figures of priests and officials from 3,000 years ago. The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square holds paintings from the 13th to the 19th centuries, including Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, Holbein’s The Ambassadors, and Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres. The gallery runs free guided tours at 11:30 am and 2:30 pm daily. The Tate Modern, housed in the former Bankside Power Station, displays international modern and contemporary art in a building that has become an icon of industrial reuse. The Turbine Hall, 35 metres high and 150 metres long, hosts large-scale site-specific installations that change twice a year. The viewing platform on the 10th floor offers a panoramic view of St Paul’s Cathedral across the Millennium Bridge. The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington focuses on decorative arts and design, holding the world’s largest collection of ceramics, glass, textiles, and furniture, including the Cast Courts with their plaster casts of Trajan’s Column and Michelangelo’s David.
West End Theatre and Live Performance Venues
The West End is London’s theatre district, with roughly 40 venues concentrated around Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden, and the Strand. The National Theatre on the South Bank operates three stages under the direction of Rufus Norris and produces a repertoire that ranges from Greek tragedy to contemporary new writing. The Olivier Theatre, the largest of the three, seats 1,160 and features a drum-revolve stage that can transform between scenes in seconds. Tickets start at GBP 15 for restricted-view seats in the upper balcony. The Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden is a smaller venue of 250 seats known for intimate, high-quality productions with actors of the calibre of Tom Hiddleston, Judi Dench, and David Tennant. The Royal Opera House in Bow Street stages opera and ballet with the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet companies, widely regarded as among the best in the world. The cheapest tickets, restricted-view seats in the amphitheatre, cost about GBP 12, and 67 of these are released for each performance. For musicals, the long-running productions including The Lion King at the Lyceum, Les Miserables at the Sondheim, and The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s continue to fill 2,000-seat houses every night. Book tickets through the venue directly or through the official Society of London Theatre website at officiallondontheatre.com to avoid the inflated prices charged by secondary ticketing sites.
contemporary Art, Street Art, and the Emerging Scene in East London
London’s contemporary art scene extends far beyond the major institutions into the galleries and streets of the East End. The White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, one of the largest commercial galleries in Europe, exhibits works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and other Young British Artists across 5,000 square metres of exhibition space. Entry is free. The Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea has launched the careers of numerous contemporary artists since it opened in 1985, including the controversial exhibition Sensation that introduced Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn to a global audience. Shoreditch and the surrounding area of East London functions as an open-air gallery of street art. Banksy, ROA, Invader, and Stik have left works on the walls and shutters of Brick Lane, Rivington Street, and Great Eastern Street. The annual Open House London weekend in September allows free access to hundreds of buildings that are normally closed to the public, including the Gherkin, the Lloyd’s Building, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park each October brings galleries from 40 countries to a giant temporary structure designed by a different architect each year. Tickets cost approximately GBP 60, but the Frieze Sculpture park in the English Gardens is free to explore and includes around 25 large-scale works by international artists.
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