Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
exact replica: It seats 1,500 patrons, not the 3,000 who regularly squeezed in during
the early 1600s, and this thatched roof has been specially treated with a fire retar-
dant—just as well, as a shot from a stage cannon fired during a performance of
Henry
VIII
provided the ultimate finale, setting the roof alight and burning the original
theatre to the ground.
Insider tip:
Guided tours of the facility are offered throughout the day in the
theatre's winter off-season. From May to September, however, Globe tours are only
available in the morning. In the afternoon, when matinee performances are taking
place, alternative tours to the rather scanty remains of the
Rose Theatre,
the Globe's
precursor (which was torn down in the early 17th century), are offered instead.
See p. 163 for details on attending a play here.
21 New Globe Walk, SE1.
&
020/7902-1400.
www.shakespeares-globe.org. Admission and Globe
Tour/Rose Tour £11.50/7.50 adults, £10/6.50 seniors and students, £7/4.50 children 5-15, free children 4
and under. Oct-Apr daily 10am-5pm; May-Sept daily 9am-noon and 12:30-5pm. Tube: Mansion House
or London Bridge.
Tate Modern
GALLERY Welcoming more than four million visitors a year,
Tate Modern is the world's most popular modern art gallery (the free admission helps),
and one of the capital's very best attractions. From the day it opened in 2000, the gallery
has received almost as many plaudits for its setting as for its contents. It's housed in a
converted 1940s' brick power station, the brooding industrial functionalism of the
architecture providing a fitting canopy for the often challenging art within. Through the
main entrance you enter a vast space, the
Turbine Hall,
where a succession of giant
temporary exhibitions are staged—the bigger and more ambitious, the better.
The permanent collection encompasses a great body of modern art dating from
1900 to the present. Spread over three levels, it covers all the big hitters, including
Matisse, Rothko, Pollock, Picasso, Dali, Duchamp, and Warhol, and is arranged
according to movements—surrealism, minimalism, cubism, expressionism, and so
on. Free 45-minute guided tours of the collection are given daily at 11am, noon, 2,
and 3pm. The gallery stays open late on Friday and Saturday, when events, such as
concerts and talks, are often put on.
Such has been the gallery's success that a new extension is being built. It will take
the form of a giant asymmetrical, brick-and-glass pyramid, which should be com-
pleted in 2012.
Bankside, SE1.
&
020/7887-8888.
www.tate.org.uk/modern. Free admission. Sun-Thurs 10am-6pm;
Fri-Sat 10am-10pm. Tube: Southwark or London Bridge.
The City
Guildhall & Guildhall Art Gallery
HISTORIC SITE The headquarters of
the City of London Corporation, the administrative body that has overseen the City's
affairs for the past 800 years, the Guildhall's original medieval framework has
endured significant repairs following the 1666 Great Fire and World War II (as well
as the addition of a rather incongruous concrete wing in the 1970s). Today its Great
Hall has a touch of the medieval theme park about it, filled with colorful livery ban-
ners and with a (reconstructed) minstrel's gallery from where 3-m (9-ft.) statues of
mythical giants Gog and Magog gaze down on proceedings.
East across Guildhall Yard, the
Guildhall Art Gallery
displays a constantly
updated selection from the Corporation's 4,000-plus works relating to the capital. The
main attraction (there's certainly no missing it) is John Singleton Copley's
The Defeat
of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782
, which at 42.5 sq m (458 sq ft.)
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