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Ninety seconds on Victoria and Albert Museum
Yes. General admission to V&A South Kensington is free and does not need booking. Some exhibitions and events carry a separate charge, and disabled visitors are entitled to discounted exhibition tickets, with a free companion or carer ticket added to each one.
The museum opens at 10.00 and closes at 17.45 daily, with Friday evening opening until 22.00. Staff begin clearing the galleries 30 minutes before closing. It is closed from 24 to 26 December.
South Kensington station is a 5-minute walk and Gloucester Road about 10 minutes. The museum stands on Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL. Planned Piccadilly line upgrades through 2026 and 2027 may disrupt journeys on that line.
They are two galleries of reproductions that opened as the Architectural Courts in 1873. Casts of monuments from across the world were collected and shown so that students and the public could study them. Room 46b is the Weston Cast Court.
In the Raphael Court at V&A South Kensington. Pope Leo X commissioned them shortly after his election in 1513, showing scenes from the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. All four Saint Peter designs survive, and three of the Saint Paul designs.
Yes. The Main Café is open from 10.00 to 17.00, and until 21.00 on Fridays. The Patisserie keeps the same daytime hours and closes at 19.00 on Fridays, and the Garden Café runs from 11.00 to 15.30. Bottled water may be carried in the galleries.
Three rooms fill a free afternoon here: a plaster cast of Michelangelo's David, seven surviving Raphael cartoons for the Sistine Chapel and a Victorian dining room lined in glazed ceramic.
The Cast Courts were built 25 metres high to fit two plaster casts of Trajan's Column. They hold reproductions of great art and architecture from across the world, collected so the public had objects to study.
The Weston Cast Court holds more than 60 casts of Italian Renaissance monuments. Its David, made by a Florentine cast-maker, stands over five metres tall, and a plaster fig leaf was made for it after Queen Victoria was shocked by the nudity. Nearby are the electrotype Gates of Paradise from Florence Cathedral, seven and a half metres high.
The Raphael Court holds the full set that survives of the designs Raphael drew to be woven in Brussels. The looms there reversed the image, so each cartoon is the mirror of the hanging made from it.
The Gamble Room, one of three refreshment rooms opened in 1868, is lined with ceramic, glass and enamel chosen to resist fire, steam and cooking smells.
Trajan's Column, in plaster, rises the full height of the Cast Courts: stand at its foot, then cross to David and the Gates of Paradise.
Next, go to the Raphael Court. Choose one cartoon and read it closely, figure by figure.
End in the Gamble Room, then sit out in the John Madejski Garden.
On a Friday evening, see the rooms you most want before 17.45, because some galleries shut then while the building stays open.
Pair it with the Natural History Museum.
Wheeled luggage and bags larger than 56 by 45 by 21 centimetres are not allowed in the galleries. Each of the two main entrances has a cloakroom.
Bring a packed lunch if you like: it can be eaten in the garden, the Exhibition Road courtyard or the learning centre lunchrooms.
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