Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and are built in uncompromisingly brutalist 1960s style. Immediately above, and
equally stark from the outside, is the
Hayward Gallery
, a large and flexible art gallery
that puts on temporary art exhibitions, mostly (but not exclusively) modern or
contemporary art. Not surprisingly then, there are currently £120-million plans afoot
to transform this area into a new
Festival Wing
, with more cafés, a rooftop garden and
clearer access from the rest of the centre.
Waterloo Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge
Waterloo Bridge
, famous for being built mostly by women during World War II, marks
the eastern limit of the Southbank Centre, but the next stretch of riverside to Blackfriars
Bridge has cultural attractions of its own: from the city's leading arts cinema,
BFI
Southbank
, to the retail-workshops of the renovated
Oxo Tower
. The bridge itself was the
scene of the
assassination
of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident working at the BBC
World Service, in 1978. He was shot in the leg with a ricin pellet fired from an umbrella
by a member of the Bulgarian secret police and died three days later.
15
BFI Southbank
Belvedere Rd • Mediathèque Tues-Fri noon-8pm, Sat & Sun 12.30-8pm • Free •
T
020 7928 3232,
W
bfi.org.uk •
!
Waterloo
Tucked underneath Waterloo Bridge is
BFI Southbank
, which screens London's most
esoteric films, hosts a variety of talks, lectures and mini-festivals and also runs
Mediathèque
, where you can settle into one of the viewing stations and choose from a
selective archive of British films, TV programmes and documentaries. The BFI also
runs the
BFI IMAX
,
housed within
the eye-catching glass drum, which
rises up from the
old “Bull Ring” beneath the roundabout at the southern end of Waterloo Bridge.
Boasting the largest screen in the country, it's definitely worth experiencing a 3D film
here at least once.
National Theatre
South Bank • Backstage tours Mon-Fri 6 daily, Sat 2 daily, Sun 1 daily; 1hr 15min • £8.50 •
T
020 7452 3400,
W
nationaltheatre.org.uk •
!
Waterloo
Just east of Waterloo Bridge, looking like a multistorey car park, is Denys Lasdun's
National Theatre
(o
cially the Royal National Theatre). An institution first mooted in
1848, it was only finally realized in 1976, and, like the Southbank Centre, its concrete
brutalism tends to receive a lot of critical flak, with Prince Charles likening it to a
nuclear power station. That said, the three auditoriums within are superb (see p.418),
and the
backstage tours
here are excellent and popular, so book in advance if possible.
Gabriel's Wharf
East of the National Theatre, the riverside promenade brings you eventually to
Gabriel's
Wharf
,
an ad hoc collection of lock-up craft shops, brasseries and bars that has a small
weekend craft market. It's a refreshing change from the franchises which have colonized
much of the South Bank, and one for which
Coin Street Community Builders
(CSCB;
W
coinstreet.org) must be thanked. With the population in this bomb-damaged stretch
of the South Bank down from fifty thousand at the beginning of the century to four
thousand in the early 1970s, big commercial developers were keen to step in and build
hotels and off,
ce blocks galore. They were successfully fought off, and instead the
emphasis has been on projects that combine commercial and community interests.
OXO Tower
South Bank •
Exhibition Gallery
Daily 11am-6pm • Free •
Public viewing gallery
Daily 10am-10pm • Free •
!
Blackfriars
East of Gabriel's Wharf stands the landmark
OXO Tower
, an old power station that was
converted into a meat-packing factory in the late 1920s by Liebig Extract of Meat
Company, best known in Britain as the makers of OXO stock cubes. To get round the
