Performance venues

London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, and the rooms above pubs where things start. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.

What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance

Tell us what we can do better, or what you’re trying to discover.

Sinfonia Smith Square

Thomas Archer's baroque church, burnt out in the Blitz and rebuilt as a concert hall, still standing alone in its square.

ClassicalLunchtime concertsWorth it for the building

Photo by Prioryman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Archer finished it in 1728 with four corner towers, and the story London tells about it is that Queen Anne was asked what she wanted and kicked over her footstool, saying: like that. It is almost certainly untrue, and the bar in the crypt is called the Footstool anyway.

A firebomb gutted it in 1941 and left the walls standing. It was rebuilt inside as a concert hall and reopened in 1969 - the room is Smith Square Hall, and Sinfonia Smith Square the charity that runs it, which merged with Southbank Sinfonia in 2021, and the room that results - white, tall, square, with the light coming from high windows on all four sides - is one of the better places in London to hear baroque music, which it programmes heavily. Lunchtime concerts run through the week, and there is jazz in the crypt below.

Where
Smith Square, SW1P 3HA
Nearest station
Westminster · 8 min walk

Coming up

NearbyPerformance venues

NearbyOther Categories

See more nearby listings

Submit a correction for this listing.

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

Which area are you in?