Tate Modern
A former power station turned home to the world's most radical modern art.
Tate Modern is Britain's national gallery of international modern and contemporary art, housed in the spectacular shell of the Bankside Power Station on the south bank of the Thames. Opened in 2000, it transformed a decommissioned industrial building — designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the same architect behind the red telephone box — into one of the most visited art museums on the planet. Entry to the permanent collection is free, which makes it one of the best-value cultural experiences in London by a considerable margin.
The permanent collection spans the 20th and 21st centuries, with major works by Picasso, Rothko, Warhol, Bourgeois, and Hockney spread across two interconnected buildings: the original Boiler House and the newer Switch House, which opened in 2016. The real showpiece is the Turbine Hall — a vast, cathedral-like space that hosts large-scale commissioned installations, often startling and always memorable. Special exhibitions run year-round in ticketed galleries and tend toward the blockbuster: recent years have brought major retrospectives of artists like Cézanne, Hilma af Klint, and Yoko Ono.
The Level 10 viewing platform in the Switch House offers one of the finest panoramas in London — the Thames, St Paul's, the City skyline — and it's free. Friday and Saturday evenings the museum stays open until 9pm, which is a genuinely good time to visit: quieter than weekend afternoons, often with events or late programming, and the walk along the riverside afterwards feels like the city at its best. The café on the ground floor is fine; the restaurant on Level 9 is considerably better and worth booking if you're making a day of it.
