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On this tour you will visit some of London's cultural treasure houses and enjoy a two-hour 'highlights' tour in both the National Gallery and the British Museum. After lunch you can decide to have a tour of the Wallace Collection or a guided walk around Legal London.
Our day starts with a visit to The National Gallery - home to one of the greatest collections of western European painting in the world. More than 2,300 paintings embrace the years between 1250 and 1900. Monet, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci are just three of the renowned artists represented. Van Gogh's famous "Sunflowers" and John Constable's "The Hay Wain" are part of the collection. Other painters represented include Rubens, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Michelangelo, Titian, Turner and Raphael. The National Gallery is a must see for art students and a mecca for lovers of western European painting.
Our next stop is The British Museum. It has been called ‘a noble and magnificent cabinet’, ‘the world’s greatest storehouse of priceless treasures’ and ‘history’s great treasure trove’. It is all these things and more. It contains, among its millions of items, the oldest Christian silver yet found in the Roman Empire, the oldest writing in the world, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, the Mummies of ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone (the key to the mysterious hieroglyphs) and Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo treasure. The courtyard of the museum has been restored to its former glory in a spectacular development with the largest covered square in Europe.
After lunch you may decide to have a 'highlights' tour of The Wallace Collection. It occupies Hertford House, once the residence of the Marquises of Hertford. This priceless collection is one of the most important collections in London for the lover of art in its various manifestations; in the choiceness and variety of its contents it resembles and even rivals the Chateau of Chantilly in France. The Wallace Collection has beautiful furniture, porcelain, sculptures, and innumerable small works of ornamental art being admirably exhibited in the rooms containing the paintings. The magnificent collections of French Furniture (mainly of the 18th century) and of Sevres Porcelain have few rivals.
Alternatively, you may decide to finish the day with a guided walking tour around Legal London. Here we will find beautiful vistas, superb architecture, colourful and vibrant traditions, fascinating literary and historical associations and, most remarkably, absolute serenity.
If time permits, after our visits (on the return to your hotel), you can join me for a panoramic drive around the City and Westminster where architecture will be our theme. We’ll visit the ‘Square Mile’, London's historic core: a place where history and modernity nestle together, where new office buildings accommodate themselves to former churchyards and the principal streets have a network of alleys with restaurants and bars. Then onto Westminster; this is London's shopping and theatre heartland. It is also home to the Royal palaces and a series of former aristocratic estates that were largely developed between the late 17th and early 18th centuries into orderly London squares and terraces. Throughout the driving tour we will see innovative modern architectural development are taking place side by side with history.
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