Dulwich Picture Gallery

#104

The world’s first purpose-built public art gallery (1811–17) and still a masterclass in how to hang Old Masters. Soane’s top-lit suite makes Rembrandt, Poussin and friends read like theatre: even light, human scale, and a plan so influential it became the blueprint of the modern gallery.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 17:00

Tuesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Wednesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Thursday: 10:00 – 17:00

Friday: 10:00 – 17:00

Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00

Admissions

Adult £5.20

Child £3.10

Concession £4.70

Family £13.50

What's not to miss inside?

Soane’s Top-Lit Enfilade

Prototype for museum design everywhere

Natural light from above means paintings sit in calm shadow—your eyes do less work, your brain does more.

Stand mid-room and shade your eyes; notice how the frames glow but don’t dazzle.

📍 Main suite of galleries

The Mausoleum

Collectors at the heart of the plan

Founders Bourgeois and Desenfans rest inside the gallery—Soane literally builds memory into circulation.

Count the sarcophagi and trace how visitors flow around them like a slow procession.

📍 Central chapel-like rotunda

Frames as Architecture

Gilded ‘rooms’ within rooms

Look past the paint: carved frames stage the pictures and converse with Soane’s mouldings.

Pick two frames and spot the motifs they share with the ceiling cornice.

📍 Throughout

🤓 Fun Facts

Rembrandt’s small portrait ‘Jacob de Gheyn III’ has been stolen four times from Dulwich—earning the nickname ‘the Takeaway Rembrandt’.

Dulwich’s plan of linked, top-lit rooms became the template for 19th- and 20th-century galleries worldwide.

The mausoleum in the plan isn’t an add-on: Soane designed the building around it, fusing memorial and museum.

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