Somerset House

Somerset House is a vast neoclassical building on the Strand, between the West End and the River Thames, and today it is a centre for art, culture and creative work rather than a museum with a fixed collection. Sir William Chambers designed it in the seventeen seventies as the first purpose-built office block in Britain, home to the Navy Board, the tax offices and the Royal Academy. For most of the twentieth century it was full of civil servants and closed to the public. Since the year two thousand the courtyard and terraces have been opened, the wings restored, and the whole complex turned into a place where you can see exhibitions, skate on ice in winter, watch films under the stars in summer, or simply sit by the fountains.

The building is arranged around the great courtyard, with the Strand Block on the north, the long river facade on the south, and the East and West Wings between them. The Courtauld Gallery, a separate institution with a world-class collection of Impressionist paintings, occupies the North Wing on the Strand side. Beneath the courtyard lie the vaulted lightwells and the Deadhouse, and the river terrace looks over the Embankment to the Thames.

What you will see on any given day depends on the programme: large temporary exhibitions in the Embankment Galleries and the West Wing, design and photography fairs, and open studios in the New Wing. The permanent pleasures are the architecture and the courtyard, and they cost nothing.