London - Trafalgar Square Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is the centre of London, avoided by Londoners if at all possible. It’s the lynch pin of the West End’s tourist triangle between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. The Strand hurtles in from Covent Garden and the east, but it’s the breadth of Whitehall approaching from Westminster and the south that explains the prominence of the Square in London’s geography. This is where the administrative offices of government meet the people, and the monarch comes too, with The Mall marching straight up from Buckingham Palace into the southwest corner through Admiralty Arch. Nelson’s Column, Landseer’s lions, several monumental statues and two large fountains inspire a sense of occasion. Pigeon-feeding has been outlawed and the recently pedestrianized north side makes the square a much more pleasant place to hang out, effectively transforming it into the front forecourt of the National Gallery. Behind is the National Portrait Gallery. These two treasure houses are the best reason for a visit here, unless you just want to sit around at the centre of things. During the day the Square must be one the most polyglot places in town.

Sights

Charing Cross.

In the middle of the Square itself stands Nelson’s Column. Admiral Horatio Nelson is just about the only military commander ever to have been truly taken to heart by the British people. Even so, it took 40 years after he was mortally wounded while defeating Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar before his Column was finally erected. Around the base the bronze relief sculptures were cast from captured French cannons, celebrating his sea victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Cape St Vincent, as well as Trafalgar.

T 020-7766 1100. Mon-Fri 0745-1800, Sat 0845-1800, Sun 0745- 1930. M Charing Cross.

The oldest and finest of the buildings surrounding the square is the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Like St Mary-le-Strand nearby, but on a larger scale, it’s an impressive fusion of classical and baroque by James Gibbs, dating from 1722-26. The interior is less remarkable, although beautifully proportioned, and includes a font from the original medieval church. Notables such as Joshua Reynolds, Hogarth, and Charles II’s mistress Nell Gwynne are buried in the churchyard. Regular lunchtime and evening concerts are also given here and there’s an excellent café in the crypt.

T 020-7747 2885, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Daily 1000-1800, Wed 1000-2100. Free. M Charing Cross.

Stretching along the north side of the square, and easily its most unmissable attraction, is the National Gallery, housing beneath its pepperpot dome more than 2000 Western European paintings dating from the 13th century to 1900. The collection began with the purchase by the government in 1824 of 38 paintings from the financier John Julius Angerstein. Originally housed in Pall Mall, the present building was purpose built and completed by 1838. Artificial lighting, to extend the winter opening hours, was introduced only as recently as 1935. The Sainsbury Wing, specially designed to house the earliest paintings, was finished in 1991. Today the gallery is pushed to cope with about five million visitors a year: the opening of another entrance into the Square at ground level is the latest in a series of measures designed to improve accessibility, capitalizing on the pedestrianization of the Square. Although it may not possess as many masterpieces as the Louvre, the Prado or the Hermitage, the gallery glories in a comprehensive selection of outstanding work from all the great schools of European painting down the ages.

T 020-7306 0055, information ext 216, T 020-7312 2463, http://www.npg.org.uk. Mon-Wed, Sat, Sun 1000-1800, Thu and Fri 1000- 2100. Free. Lectures: Tue 1500 and Thu 1310, Sat and Sun 1330 or 1500, free. Thu 1900, admission charge. Fri music nights 1830, free. I T Gallery does print-outs; black and white free, colour postcard £5.50, colour A4 £17.50. M Charing Cross.

Tucked away behind the National Gallery, up Charing Cross Road, the National Portrait Gallery is a shrine to British history pictured in the portraits of those who have shaped it. A six-year lottery-funded project has resulted in the excellent new Ondaatje Wing, opened in May 2000. Directly beyond the old main entrance, visitors arrive in a soaring lobby, ready to be whisked up an escalator to the earliest pictures in the collection.

It might come as a disappointment that there are no medieval works here, the earliest being an impressive portrait of Henry VII, but the Tudor Galleries more than make up for their absence. Modelled on an Elizabethan long room, they include the only portrait of Shakespeare known to have been taken from life, Holbein’s Henry VIII, several striking images of Elizabeth I and many of her courtiers. The Stuarts are even more colourful: from the leggy full-length celebration of James I’s toyboy, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham to a vivid likeness of a jaded Charles II. The Regency Galleries have also been recently refurbished. Modern players can be found in the 20th-century gallery on the ground floor and also in the Balcony Gallery of the Ondaatje Wing where images and sculptures of movers and shakers in Britain since the 1960s are displayed. Look out for Helmut Newton’s huge and scary black and white photo of Margaret Thatcher.

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