The National Gallery

The National Gallery holds one of the finest collections of Western European painting anywhere, from the thirteenth century to the early twentieth, and every masterpiece in its permanent collection is free to see. It occupies the north side of Trafalgar Square, its portico looking down Whitehall toward Parliament, and it celebrated its bicentenary in 2024 with a major refurbishment programme, including the transformed Sainsbury Wing, now the main entrance facing the square. The collection reads like an art history textbook brought to life. Early Italian altarpieces and Leonardo's cartoon-like Virgin of the Rocks; Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, with its convex mirror and tiny reflected figures; Holbein's The Ambassadors and its famous distorted skull; Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne; Velazquez's Rokeby Venus; Rembrandt's late self-portrait; Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, voted Britain's favourite painting; Constable's The Hay Wain; and the Impressionist rooms with Monet's water-lilies, Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres and Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The scale is manageable compared to the Louvre: a focused highlights tour takes ninety minutes, and the chronological layout makes it easy to follow. Entry is free with no booking required, though booking a free general admission ticket gives fast-track entry. Charged exhibitions run alongside — Renoir and Love continues until 31 January 2027 — and the gallery stays open until 9pm on Fridays. Building work continues in parts of the gallery, so some rooms are closed and some paintings temporarily moved; check the online floorplan for what is on show before you go.

The gallery was founded in 1824 when Parliament bought thirty-eight paintings from the collection of the banker John Julius Angerstein, displaying them initially in his Pall Mall townhouse. William Wilkins' building on Trafalgar Square opened in 1838, deliberately sited where both rich and poor Londoners could reach it — the principle of free access for all classes was there from the start. The Sainsbury Wing, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and opened in 1991, houses the earliest paintings; its recent remodelling opened up a brighter, more welcoming entrance onto the square, part of the gallery's second-century renewal.

How to see it: pick up a floorplan or use the gallery's online guides, and choose either a chronological walk — starting with the early Renaissance in the Sainsbury Wing and ending with the Impressionists — or a highlights circuit of perhaps twenty paintings. Mornings and Friday evenings are calmest; weekend afternoons bring crowds to the famous rooms. Bags must be small, and there is a paid cloakroom that does not take wheeled luggage. Free talks and family activities run regularly, and the gallery's café and restaurant are good for a pause, though you cannot eat your own food in them. Because building work means paintings occasionally move, look up anything you are making a special trip to see.

Around the gallery: next door, the National Portrait Gallery, reopened in 2023 after its own renovation, adds faces from Tudor monarchs to modern celebrities. Trafalgar Square itself, with Nelson's Column, the lions and the Fourth Plinth's rotating contemporary commissions, is the city's great public stage; St Martin-in-the-Fields across the square hosts candlelit concerts and a café in its crypt. Covent Garden and Leicester Square are five minutes away, and Whitehall leads straight down to Westminster, so the gallery slots easily into almost any central London day — ideally more than once.