Guildhall Art Gallery
The City of London’s collection leans Victorian and London-centric, shown in bright, purpose-built rooms above the capital’s Roman amphitheatre. Come for big narrative canvases and civic portraits, stay for the surprise of ancient masonry under your feet. Plan 60–90 minutes including the amphitheatre level.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Victorian Blockbusters
Storytelling on a cinematic scaleDrama, detail, and light effects that feel like early cinema in paint.
📍 Ground floor, main nave
Copley’s ‘Gibraltar’
One of Britain’s largest oil paintingsSmoke, fire, and ships—Copley choreographs chaos with terrifying clarity.
📍 Feature wall, large-format gallery
London Portraits
Faces of a working cityA crash course in who ran London—merchants, mayors, reformers—and how they wanted to be remembered.
📍 Side galleries
Roman Amphitheatre
London’s arena under the Guildhall yardTimbers, walls and a traced outline reveal a lost crowd space where spectacles once roared.
📍 Basement, black-stone ring marks
Inspire your Friends
- The amphitheatre was only rediscovered in 1988—its footprint is traced in dark stone in the yard above the gallery.
- The original gallery was destroyed in the Blitz; today’s light-filled building opened decades later with the Roman site integrated below.
- Copley’s ‘Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar’ is so large that it dictates the hang—rooms are literally planned around it.
