National Gallery
The National Gallery is Europe in a single walk: 700 years of painting, free to step into. Van Eyck's jewel-like Arnolfini dazzles with microscopic detail; Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks breathes cool mystery; Turner's Fighting Temeraire bids farewell to sail; Van Gogh's Sunflowers glows with thick, blazing paint. Rooms flow by period and school, so stories of style and belief unfold naturally. Start upstairs and work backwards in time, or follow a free highlights trail at the desk. Arrive early for calm viewing, and step close, then back, to feel composition and colour at work. Cloakroom and cafés make long visits easy; allow two hours for a first sweep, longer if you like to linger and compare.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Sunflowers
Van Gogh’s blazing still lifePainted in 1888, this version of Sunflowers was created in Arles to decorate Gauguin’s room and celebrate friendship through radiant colour.
📍 Room 43
Arnolfini Portrait
Van Eyck’s 1434 masterpieceMinute brushwork records every thread and reflection; the tiny convex mirror shows two witnesses and a signature above it.
📍 Room 56
Fighting Temeraire
Turner on change and memoryIn 1839 Turner painted an ageing warship towed to scrapyard, a farewell to sail in the age of steam and smoke.
📍 Room 34
Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo’s mysterious landscapePainted in the late 1400s, the London version shows soft light, strange rocks and gestures that guide your eye in a triangle.
📍 Room 66
The Hay Wain
Constable’s English countrysideExhibited in 1821, this rural scene mixes careful sky studies with on-the-spot observation of Suffolk’s fields and water.
📍 Room 34
Inspire your Friends
- The National Gallery began in 1824 with 38 paintings bought from John Julius Angerstein’s collection.
- Today the collection numbers over 2,300 paintings dating from the 1200s to 1900.
- The Sainsbury Wing opened in 1991 to display early Renaissance works and is undergoing major refurbishment.
- Van Gogh painted several Sunflowers; the London version dates to 1888 during his Arles period.
- Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire was voted ‘Britain’s favourite painting’ in a 2005 BBC poll.
