Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Wellington Arch
About Wellington Arch
A monumental arch on the edge of Hyde Park that also conceals a museum and viewing gallery.
There's a permanent display of the arch's history, how it was moved to its current location, the controversy about the statue on the top, and its use as a small police station.
There is also a running temporary exhibition in the upper galleries, where you can also go outside to the viewing gallery for wonderful views towards Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace.
Address
Wellington Arch,
Apsley Way, Hyde Park Corner,
London,
W1J 7JZ
Ticket prices
Adult: £6.80
Child (5-17 years): £3.60
Concession: £5.90
Family (2 adults, up to 3 children): £17.20
Family (1 adult, up to 3 children): £10.40
English Heritage members get free entry to all English Heritage properties, including Wellington Arch.
The monumental arch at Hyde Park Corner isn’t just something to walk past, you can go inside, and there’s an art exhibition filling the upper floors at the moment.
If you missed the exhibition of visions of a concrete clad London that were planned in the 1960s that recently took place at the Wellington Arch, there is another chance to see some of the exhibits.
A new exhibition has opened inside the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park that looks at how the architecture associated with the motor car changed the landscape.
Running under Hyde Park Corner is a road tunnel built in the 1960s to relieve congestion on the roundabout above, and sitting slap bang in the middle of Hyde Park Corner, surrounded by war memorials is a gigantic ventilation shaft to extract car pollution from below.
One of London’s greatest strengths, and in some ways, its greatest curse, has been the lack of a dominating Overload with the power to tear down entire chunks of the city and rebuild it in their preferred style.
Wellington Arch next to Hyde Park has swapped out the display inside the top of the arch bit and is running a short exhibition on how 20th century buildings, often derided have been preserved and in some cases, gained affection.
Almost everyone who has visited St Pancras station has taken time out to look for the statue of John Betjeman in his famous upward staring pose holding onto the trademark hat.
In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, but an equally important discovery was made in France, when a flint axe was found buried amongst the bones of now extinct animals.
London is packed full of various lumps of ancient Egypt cluttering up museums who by various means in the past acquired them, so another display in another museum might seem excessive.
Wellington Arch, the huge triumphal pile of stone at Hyde Park Corner has gained a tiny bookshop inside the arch itself – oh, and a new exhibition area upstairs. I doubt many people who casually wander past the huge archway…
