Main Attractions
Reservations include: VAT and service charge. exclude: any extras taken during your stay.
Guildhall Art Gallery
Many famous and much-loved pictures are once again on view for the public to see and enjoy in the new Guildhall Art Gallery which opened in 1999. Guildhall Art Gallery is located on the east side of Guildhall Yard, adjacent to the historic Guildhall. The original gallery was burned down during a severe air raid in May 1941. The new gallery displays about 250 works of art at a time, with a programme of temporary exhibitions exploring different themes and allowing many lesser-known pictures from the collection to come out of store.
The City of London began collecting works of art in the seventeenth century, when it commissioned portraits of the judges appointed to assess property claims in the wake of the Great Fire of London of 1666. Its collection now comprises 4,000 works of art ranging from portraits of kings and queens to depictions of important naval battles, from period views of historic London to the work of contemporary artists. Since the Second World War, the City of London’s collection has concentrated on London subjects.
Perhaps the most popular works in the Guildhall collection are its Victorian pictures, including well-known favourites like Millais’ My First Sermon and My Second Sermon and Landseer’s The First Leap , as well as a large landscape by John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows . The Guildhall Art Gallery also houses the famous painting The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar by John Singleton Copley.
Visit the Guildhall Art Gallery for more information.
Image Gallery
