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Public and commercial galleries, sculptures on streets, artists' houses and famous auction houses. Use the filters to narrow it down. Exhibitions are listed where possible.
A Georgian government palace on the Strand, now a courtyard of fountains and an ice rink, with the Courtauld's Impressionists upstairs.
Public gallery
Also in Museums.
Somerset House is the grandest public building of Georgian London, begun in 1776 to Sir William Chambers's design as offices for the Navy Board, the tax and stamp offices and a dozen smaller departments, with the Royal Academy and the learned societies given the block on the Strand. It stands where the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector to the boy king Edward VI, began a Renaissance palace in 1549 and was executed before it was finished. Elizabeth I lived there as a princess, Charles I's queen Henrietta Maria had Inigo Jones build her a Catholic chapel there, and after the king's execution Parliament sold his pictures from it, 1,570 paintings for £118,000. Cromwell lay in state there in 1658. Until the Embankment was built in the 1860s the river came up to its south wall.
The Inland Revenue kept the building until 2013, and for most of the twentieth century the great courtyard was a car park for civil servants. The Courtauld Institute moved into the north wing in 1989, and the trust that took the building on in 1997 cleared the courtyard: fifty-five jets of water rise from the paving in summer, and an ice rink fills it in winter. The wings hold a rolling programme of design, photography and fashion shows, studios for artists and small creative businesses, and the summer concerts. The Courtauld Gallery, a separate ticket, is one of the finest small collections anywhere: Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and a room of Cézannes.
| Monday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
| Wednesday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
| Thursday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
| Friday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
| Saturday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
| Sunday | 08:00 – 23:00 |
Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.
Building and courtyard; the exhibition galleries keep their own hours, usually 10:00–18:00.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.