Architecture

Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.

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Sir John Soane's Museum

An architect's own house, left exactly as he arranged it, with mirrors and light shafts everywhere.

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Photo by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums and Art.

Soane rebuilt three houses on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields between 1792 and 1824 as a place to live, to teach and to keep the things he had bought, and an Act of Parliament in 1833 required that nothing be moved after his death. Almost nothing has been. What makes it an architectural pilgrimage rather than a collection is what he did with daylight: coloured glass, concealed shafts, domes over rooms with no visible windows, and mirrors set at angles to double a space that is only a few feet across. The Picture Room's walls open outward on hinges to reveal more paintings behind them. Book ahead for the candlelit evenings if you can get one.

Where
13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP
Nearest station
Holborn · 2 min walk

Step-free access

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Hours

MondayClosed
Tuesday10:00 – 16:30
Wednesday10:00 – 16:30
Thursday10:00 – 16:30
Friday10:00 – 16:30
Saturday10:00 – 16:30
SundayClosed

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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