How free works in London
Free admission is a London habit, not a marketing stunt. The national museums have been free at the door since 2001, and several private collections choose to stay open at no charge as well. Most ask for a suggested donation, most take none of it personally, and none of the rooms below will turn you away for giving nothing. Some special exhibitions inside these buildings are ticketed — the twelve rooms here are the permanent, no-charge parts, and they are the best value in the city.
The grand free rooms
The British Museum's Great Court
Walk into the Great Court in Bloomsbury and the glass roof does the first half of the work. Beyond it, the museum's free rooms hold the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon marbles and rooms of objects from every continent. It is a crowd magnet, so go at opening time.
The National Gallery's Rooms 34 and 43
On Trafalgar Square, the Impressionist room with Van Gogh's Sunflowers and the British room with Turner's The Fighting Temeraire are the two free rooms worth scheduling around. The gallery is open daily from 10:00, with late opening until 21:00 on Fridays.
The National Portrait Gallery
Across the square, the portrait collection is free from 10:30 daily and its new wing has a genuinely useful hang — the Tudors at the top, contemporaries near the bottom. Allow an hour.
The South Bank and South Kensington
Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and collection
The Turbine Hall, the free permanent collection and the Blavatnik viewing gallery all cost nothing. You could spend the whole day here; you should at least take the lift to the top for the skyline.
Tate Britain
Upstream at Millbank, the national collection of British art from 1500 to now is free, and the galleries are quieter than its South Bank sibling. The Clore Gallery's Turners alone justify the trip.
The V&A's Cast Courts
In South Kensington, the two soaring Cast Courts hold full-size plaster copies of Trajan's Column. Free, absurd, and unlike anything else in the country.
The house museums
The Wallace Collection
Hertford House on Manchester Square is a townhouse full of eighteenth-century French painting and furniture, free every day. The café courtyard is worth the visit even if the art were not.
Sir John Soane's Museum
Three houses knocked into one on Lincoln's Inn Fields, preserved as the architect left them in 1837, free of charge. It is dark, crowded and impossible to forget; book a slot in advance.
Kenwood House
On the edge of Hampstead Heath, this white neoclassical villa holds a small but superb collection including Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Two Circles, free all year. Pair it with a walk across the heath.
East and beyond
Whitechapel Gallery
The East End's great independent gallery is free, with first-rate contemporary shows and a proper bookshop. Special exhibitions occasionally carry a charge; the permanent rooms do not.
Guildhall Art Gallery
In the City, this municipal gallery is free and quiet, and it holds a Victorian painting collection most visitors never discover. It also houses London's Roman amphitheatre in the basement.
William Morris Gallery
In Walthamstow, the designer's childhood home is a free museum of his work and a lovely Victorian house besides. Worth the Victoria line ride, especially for the wallpaper room.
The fine print
Free does not mean empty. The national museums are busiest on Saturdays and school holidays, quietest on weekday mornings and late Friday evenings. Several of these rooms now ask you to book a free timed slot in advance — the Soane, in particular, is strict about it. And the two small rules that keep them free are the same everywhere: no flash photography, and a donation box near the door if you can spare the change. Twelve rooms, zero tickets. That is London at its best.
