Part of the Southbank Centre, the Hayward Gallery hosts a changing roster of contemporary art in a 1960s brutalist building. It doesn't have a permanent collection; instead, it puts on three to four exhibitions a year. A huge refurbishment was completed in 2018, restoring the 66 glass-pyramid skylights to let in natural light in for the first time, among other improvements. Ticket prices vary by exhibition.
Hayward Gallery
South Bank
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
21.17 MILES
The world’s largest and oldest continuously occupied fortress, Windsor Castle is a majestic vision of battlements and towers. Used for state occasions, it…
0.68 MILES
A splendid mixture of architectural styles, Westminster Abbey is considered the finest example of Early English Gothic. It's not merely a beautiful place…
0.7 MILES
One of London's most amazing attractions, Tate Modern is an outstanding modern- and contemporary-art gallery housed in the creatively revamped Bankside…
2.72 MILES
With its thunderous, animatronic dinosaur, riveting displays about planet earth, outstanding Darwin Centre and architecture straight from a Gothic fairy…
0.91 MILES
Sir Christopher Wren’s 300-year-old architectural masterpiece is a London icon. Towering over diminutive Ludgate Hill in a superb position that's been a…
1.7 MILES
Few parts of the UK are as steeped in history or as impregnated with legend and superstition as the titanic stonework of the Tower of London. Not only is…
0.8 MILES
Seeing a play at Shakespeare's Globe – ideally standing under the open-air "wooden O" – is experiencing the playwright's work at its best and most…
1.02 MILES
With almost six million visitors trooping through its doors annually, the British Museum in Bloomsbury, one of the oldest and finest museums in the world,…
Nearby South Bank attractions
0.04 MILES
Southbank Centre, Europe's largest space for performing and visual arts, is made up of three brutalist buildings that stretch across seven riverside…
0.26 MILES
It’s hard to imagine South Bank without the London Eye (officially named the lastminute.com London Eye after its current sponsor), the world’s largest…
0.28 MILES
The backstreets of Waterloo hide some amazing architecture. Roupell St is an astonishingly pretty row of low-rise workers' cottages, all sooty bricks and…
0.3 MILES
A grungy road under Waterloo station seems an unlikely place to find art, theatre and restaurants, but Leake St is the latest of London's railway arches…
0.32 MILES
Mostly geared towards kids, the Sea Life London Aquarium includes a shark tunnel, ray lagoon and Gentoo penguin enclosures that will keep little ones…
0.33 MILES
This grand building (1922) with a curved, colonnaded facade was the home of the London County Council, and later the Greater London Council, until 1986…
0.34 MILES
Designed in 1775 for government departments and royal societies – perhaps the world's first office block – Somerset House now contains galleries,…
0.35 MILES
A scary tour of London's gruesome history awaits. Expect darkness, sudden loud noises, flashing lights, squirts of unspecified liquid and unpleasant…