Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts is one of Britain's most distinguished and beloved cultural institutions, occupying a magnificent position on Piccadilly in the heart of London's West End. Founded in 1768 under the patronage of King George III, it holds the distinction of being the United Kingdom's first art school and the oldest society devoted exclusively to the fine arts in Britain. Today it functions simultaneously as an independent art school offering postgraduate training to a small cohort of highly selected students, a working studio space for its elected membership of eminent artists and architects, and a world-class venue for temporary exhibitions that attract visitors from across the globe. Its combination of historical prestige, architectural grandeur, and consistently ambitious programming makes it one of the essential stops on any serious visitor's London itinerary.
The Academy's home, Burlington House, is itself a story worth telling. The original building dates from the 1660s, when it was constructed as a Baroque townhouse for the Earl of Burlington. It was substantially rebuilt in the Palladian style by the third Earl of Burlington in the early eighteenth century, and the handsome courtyard facade visitors encounter today owes much to that aristocratic passion for Italian architecture. The British government acquired Burlington House in 1854, and after significant Victorian-era extensions, the Royal Academy moved in permanently in 1868, its centenary year. The institution shares the courtyard with several learned societies — the Geological Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Linnean Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry — giving the entire precinct an atmosphere of concentrated intellectual and artistic seriousness that feels unlike almost anywhere else in the city.
The physical experience of Burlington House is one of layered grandeur and surprise. You enter from Piccadilly through a triumphal archway into a broad courtyard dominated by a statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Academy's first president, brush and palette in hand. The main building's facade is Italianate and imposing, faced in stone that has mellowed to a warm buff over the centuries. Inside, the sequence of principal rooms used for exhibitions — the General Assembly Room, the Lecture Room, the Library — are sumptuously decorated with gilded ceilings, polished floors, and walls designed to display large-scale paintings with authority. The newer Sackler Wing, added by Sir Norman Foster in 1991 and recently succeeded by a major redevelopment completed in 2018 by David Chipperfield, connects Burlington House via a stunning glazed bridge to Burlington Gardens, greatly expanding the gallery space and adding a beautiful restaurant, a more accessible entrance, and new galleries that feel simultaneously contemporary and reverential to the historical setting.
The Academy's permanent collection, though not enormous, contains some genuinely exceptional works. Most famous among them is the Taddei Tondo, one of only four marble sculptures by Michelangelo outside Italy, a circular relief of the Virgin and Child that sits in a specially designed room and draws a constant stream of quiet admirers. The collection also includes works by Constable, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Turner, and the Academy's diploma works — pieces submitted by each Academician upon election — create an idiosyncratic and revealing portrait of British art over more than two and a half centuries. The Annual Summer Exhibition, held every year without interruption since 1769, remains the world's largest open submission contemporary art show and is a distinctly democratic and sometimes gloriously chaotic affair, with thousands of works by amateur and professional artists hanging cheek by jowl across the galleries.
The surrounding area reinforces the Academy's sense of being at the cultural centre of things. Piccadilly itself is one of London's great ceremonial streets, and the stretch immediately outside Burlington House is particularly rich. Fortnum and Mason, the legendary grocer and gift shop, is just a short walk east. Hatchard's, London's oldest bookshop, is immediately adjacent. The Ritz Hotel stands nearby. To the west, Piccadilly unfolds toward Hyde Park Corner. The Burlington Arcade, one of London's oldest and most charming covered shopping passages, runs along the east side of Burlington House and emerges onto Old Bond Street. Green Park underground station is a few minutes' walk, and the whole of Mayfair's gallery district — Cork Street, Albemarle Street, Dover Street — is easily explored on foot from here.
Visiting the Royal Academy is a reliably pleasurable experience in all but the most crowded moments. The ticketed temporary exhibitions, which tend to focus on major retrospectives or thematic surveys of the highest ambition, can be extremely popular and advance booking is strongly advised. The permanent collection areas and the courtyard, however, are freely accessible and offer a more relaxed encounter with the building and its quieter treasures. The Summer Exhibition runs from June through August and should be experienced if at all possible — it has a festive, slightly anarchic energy quite unlike the Academy's more reverential blockbusters, and the sheer volume of work on display is both overwhelming and exhilarating. The café and restaurant on the Burlington Gardens side are well regarded and make for a civilised rest during or after a visit. The Academy shop is among the better art-institution shops in London, with a serious selection of catalogues, art books, and prints.
A few details lend the Royal Academy extra depth for curious visitors. The Academicians, of whom there are eighty at any given time (forty painters and sculptors, twelve architects, eight printmakers, and various others), are elected by their peers and include some of the most celebrated names in contemporary British art and architecture. Each holds a studio within Burlington House, meaning that alongside the public exhibitions, working artists are quietly present in the building on any given day. The Academy fought hard for its independence from government in the nineteenth century and has never received direct government subsidy, relying instead on exhibition revenues, membership, donations, and bequests — a fact that shapes its character as an institution that must genuinely engage the public to survive. The 2018 reopening, following a three-year redevelopment, revealed previously hidden historical spaces and doubled the publicly accessible area of the building, making it a considerably richer destination than even longtime visitors might expect.