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London Culture
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The Culture of London concerns the arts, music, museums, festivals and other entertainment in London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. The city is particularly renowned for its theatre quarter, and its West End theatre district has given the name to West End theatre, the strand of mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in London. London is also home to notable cultural attractions such as the British Museum, the Tate Galleries, the National Gallery, the Notting Hill Carnival and The O2. A variety of landmarks and objects are cultural icons associated with London, such as Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the tube map. Many other British cultural icons are strongly associated with London in the minds of visiting tourists, including the red telephone box, the routemaster bus, the black taxi and the Union Flag. |
London is home to over 240 museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. Also of eighteenth-century foundation is the Royal Academy of Arts; its summer exhibition has been an annual fixture on the London social calendar since 1769. In 1824 the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square.
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The capital’s cultural richness is virtually unrivalled. Its cultural life is prized by residents and visitors alike, and is central to the sense of identity of its diverse communities:
- London has four of the UK’s 16 world heritage sites — Greenwich, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
- London has approximately 40,000 listed structures, over 150 scheduled ancient monuments, and almost 900 conservation areas.
- There are over 250 museums in London, including 16 National Museums and 24 collections designated to be of national importance. This is over 20 percent of the UK’s designated collections.
- With 90,000 seats the new Wembley Stadium is the largest football stadium in the world with every seat under cover.
- Dulwich Picture Gallery is England’s oldest public gallery. Its outstanding collection – including works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Poussin, Rubens, Gainsborough and Canaletto – was originally intended for the King of Poland.
- London has cultural centres run by and dedicated to its Polish, Kurdish, Chinese, Romanian, Hungarian, Bengali, Jewish, Somali, Hindu, and Irish communities. As well as supporting their respective communities, they enable all visitors to learn more about world culture.
- Nearly a third of all the UK’s archives are in London. These include some of the world's largest archive holdings such as the National Archives. Based at Kew, these provide an unbroken record of Britain's government from the 11th century to the present day.
- 12 of London’s universities and colleges focus on the arts and related disciplines. These 12 include renowned institutions such as the Royal Colleges of Arts and Music, Goldsmiths, and Trinity Laban.
London provides 58 percent of England’s affordable studio space for artists. This space is concentrated in East and South East London, and houses over 2,000 artists.
- The Tate Modern is the world’s most popular contemporary art gallery. In 2005, it received 4 million visitors compared to 2.7 million for New York's MoMA and 2.5 million for Paris’s Pompidou Centre.
- The history and heritage of London is the strongest draw for visitors to the capital. Museums and galleries are rated as a ‘very important’ or ‘important’ factor by over three quarters of visitors.
- There were almost 40 million cinema admissions in London in 2006, representing over 25 percent of the UK’s total.
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