Somerset House Audio Guide: Georgian Powerhouse to Modern Arts Hub

Somerset House has been at the heart of London life for centuries – first as a Tudor palace, then as a grand government complex, and now as one of the city's most dynamic cultural spaces. On this walking tour, you'll trace the building's transformation from a hub of naval administration and tax collection into a showcase for art, architecture, and gastronomy. You'll also explore the wider Aldwych neighbourhood, including buildings that shaped British broadcasting, diplomacy, and education.

The tour starts outside the Gibraltar Government Office on the pedestrianised stretch of the Strand, where you'll get your bearings among a remarkable cluster of early 20th-century buildings. From here, you'll wind through the neoclassical quadrangle that Sir William Chambers designed in 1776, pausing at engraved doorways that still bear the names of the offices once housed within – the Stamp Office, the Principal Probate Registry, and the Navy Board. You'll also step out onto the river terrace, where Somerset House once sat directly on the Thames before Joseph Bazalgette's Victoria Embankment pushed the riverbank southward in the 1860s.

The tour continues through the South Wing's Embankment Galleries and the Victorian New Wing, where the Inland Revenue worked until 2013, ending 224 years of tax collection on the site. The tour ends back on the Strand, steps from Waterloo Bridge, Covent Garden, and the South Bank.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• See Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear at the Courtauld Gallery
• Admire St Mary Le Strand, an early 18th-century church shaped by architect James Gibbs's study of Italian baroque
• Learn how Charles Dickens' parents married at St Mary Le Strand in 1809
• Discover the Nelson Stair, a replica of the staircase destroyed by a German Zeppelin raid in World War One
• Visit India House, completed in 1930 and home to the Indian diplomatic mission since independence in 1947
• Hear how Bush House – once declared the world's most expensive building – became the global home of the BBC World Service

Somerset House rewards slow exploration, so pause for coffee, browse the Courtauld shop, or linger over the Thames view whenever the mood takes you.