Trafalgar Square and National Gallery Tour

Our tour starts at Charing Cross, in the Strand, right in the heart of London. A short walk leads us to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. You'll hear how the Charing Cross commemorates an amazing royal wife, Eleanor of Castile (died 1290), and how the place used to mark the centre of London. It stands by the site of the factory where the 10-year-old Charles Dickens was forced to work when family circumstances declined. Then, heading into Trafalgar Square, we’ll see and hear about the various statues of important historical figures, Nelson’s column, the church of St. Martin in the Fields, South Africa House and Canada House with its rooftop beehives. This is where Londoners march, demonstrate and celebrate (especially on New Year’s Eve). Then, we’ll enter the National Gallery whose 2,500 paintings make it one of the richest and most important art collections in the world. Our highlights tour gives a panorama of Western European art from the 1200s to the early 1900s. We will cover all the major European schools of painting with masterpieces from Italy, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Germany and Spain. You can tick many of the greatest artists off your list: Duccio, Giotto, Pisanello, Raphael, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Titian and Caravaggio; Van Eyck, Van Der Weyden, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Reubens and Van Dyck; Claude, Poussin as well as the Impressionists; Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner; Holbein, Cranach and Durer; Velazquez, Murillo as well as Goya.