Barbican Centre
A concrete citadel for culture: the Barbican folds concert halls, theatres, galleries and a tropical conservatory into a raised ‘city within a city’ built on a Blitz-cleared site. Brutalist outside, warm timber and coppery light within, it’s a place to get lost—then rewarded—with hidden vistas of water, fins of raw concrete, and sudden gardens. Do a slow lap of the podium (Level G) to read the architecture, then dip inside for the art gallery or a concert; finish in the conservatory where 1,500+ plants turn the geometry lush.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Barbican Conservatory
A rainforest tucked in a theatre’s roofMore than 1,500 species soften the brutalist grid—ferns, palms and koi pooled among catwalks and concrete.
📍 Level 3, above the theatre fly-tower (Sun & selected dates)
Lakeside Terrace
Water, brick and concrete in quiet choreographyRills and fountains stitch the estate to the arts centre; in summer, planters turn the podium into a garden square.
📍 Level G, south side
Barbican Art Gallery & The Curve
Flagship shows + a 90-metre arcMuseum-scale exhibitions upstairs; downstairs a single sinuous gallery invites installations that unfold as you walk.
📍 Level 3 (Gallery); Level G (Curve)
Concert Hall Warmth
Brutalism outside, teak and glow withinThe hall’s copper hues and timber baffles make a surprise: intimacy inside a megastructure.
📍 Level -1 to Level 4, Hall
St Giles-without-Cripplegate
A medieval survivor in a modern fortressBombed area, intact church: Perpendicular Gothic stones set among tower blocks—London time travel in 30 steps.
📍 Podium, east of the lake
Inspire your Friends
- The Barbican stands on the former Cripplegate ward—so heavily bombed in WWII that planners could design an entire raised city from scratch.
- Its conservatory is London’s second-largest after Kew—built to cloak the theatre’s backstage fly-tower in greenery.
- Queen Elizabeth II opened the centre in 1982 and called it “one of the wonders of the modern world.”
- The estate and arts centre are knitted by ‘highwalks’—pedestrian routes one level up—so you can cross a big chunk of the City without touching a road.
- Those rough vertical lines in the concrete are deliberate: bush-hammered finishes that catch light and give scale to the megastructure.
