Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Portland Place
After the chicane around All Souls, you enter
Portland Place
, laid out by the Adam
brothers in the 1770s and incorporated by Nash in his grand Regent Street plan. Once
the widest street in London, it's still a majestic avenue, still lined here and there with
Adam-style houses, boasting wonderful fanlights and iron railings. At the northern end
of Portland Place, Nash originally planned a giant “circus” as a formal entrance to
Regent's Park (see p.283). Only the southern half - two graceful arcs of creamy terraces
known collectively as
Park Crescent
- was completed, now cut off from the park by
busy Marylebone Road.
Chinese Embassy
Several embassies occupy properties on Portland Place, but the most prominent
is the
Chinese Embassy
at no. 49, opposite which there's usually a small group of
protesters permanently positioned objecting either to Chinese suppression of Falun
Gong or its policies in Tibet. It was here in 1896 that the exiled republican leader
Sun Yat-sen
was kidnapped and held incognito, on the orders of the Chinese
emperor. Eventually Sun managed to send a note to a friend, saying “I am certain
to be beheaded. Oh woe is me!”. When the press got hold of the story, Sun was
finally released; he went on to found the Chinese Nationalist Party and became the
first president of China in 1911.
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
66 Portland Place • Mon, Wed & Thurs 8am-7pm, Tues 8am-9pm, Fri 8am-6pm, Sat 9am-5pm; exhibitions Mon-Sat 10am-5pm • Free •
T
020 7580 5533,
W
architecture.com •
!
Regent's Park or Great Portland Street
he
Royal Institute of British Architects
or RIBA at no. 66 is arguably the finest building
on Portland Place, with its sleek Portland-stone facade built in the 1930s amid the
remaining Adam houses. The main staircase remains a wonderful period piece, with its
etched glass balustrades and walnut veneer, and with two large black marble columns
rising up on either side. You can view the interior en route to the institute's excellent
ground-floor bookshop, first-floor exhibition galleries and café.
4
Wallace Collection
Manchester Square • Daily 10am-5pm • Free •
T
020 7563 9500,
W
wallacecollection.org •
!
Bond Street
It comes as a great surprise to find the miniature eighteenth-century French chateau of
Hertford House in the quiet Georgian streets just to the north of busy Oxford Street.
Even more remarkable is the house's splendid
Wallace Collection
within, a public
museum and art gallery combined, which boasts paintings by Titian, Rembrandt and
Velázquez, the finest museum collection of Sèvres porcelain in the world and one of
the finest displays of Boulle marquetry furniture, too. The collection was originally
bequeathed to the nation in 1897 by the widow of Richard Wallace, an art collector
and the illegitimate son of the fourth Marquess of Hertford. The museum has
preserved the feel of a grand stately home, an old-fashioned institution with exhibits
piled high in glass cabinets and paintings covering every inch of wall space. However,
it's the combined effect of the exhibits set amid superbly restored eighteenth-century
period fittings - and a bloody great
armoury
- that makes the place so remarkable.
Labelling is deliberately terse, so as not to detract from the aristocratic ambience, but
there are information cards in each room, free highlights tours most days (11.30am &
2.30pm) and themed audioguides available (for a fee).
Ground floor
The ground-floor rooms begin with the
Front State Room
, to the right as you enter,
where the walls are hung with
several fetching portraits by Reynolds, and Lawrence's
WALLACE COLLECTION >
