[2025 London Attraction] Travel Guide for National Portrait Gallery (Updated Mar)

This is a very unique one among the museums and galleries in London, specializing in the collection of portraits of people, and the photography of people is also exhibited from time to time. The importance of the person in the painting determines whether the portrait will be collected by the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery was founded in 1856 and houses many well-known paintings in Western Europe, including works by Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Cézanne and others. Contemporary paintings are also exhibited from time to time, and the annual BP Portrait Competition is held. The collections of the National Gallery are displayed in different exhibition rooms and are divided into five parts. Except for a Victorian portrait exhibition room, the rest are classified according to historical years, and there are about 10,000 works from the 15th century to the present. Among these works, about 4,000 are oil paintings, sculptures, etc., 60% of which have been exhibited in museums or on tour. If you want to visit in chronological order, it is recommended to start with the Sainsbury exhibition room, and then the west, north and east exhibition rooms. The museum also has 220,000 portrait-related photographs, of which at least 130,000 have original negatives. The age of these works is from 1840 to the present, and it is mainly divided into two parts. The more important collections are led by "P", and the general collections are led by "X".