National Gallery

Entry to the main collection costs nothing and no ticket is required. You can walk in off Trafalgar Square.

At busy periods a free timed slot can be reserved online, which smooths entry, but it is not generally compulsory.

Donations are invited rather than required.

What is ticketed: major temporary exhibitions, which are separately priced and timed, and which sell out for the popular ones.

There is a bag check at the entrance.

The practical shape: walk in, spend two hours with some of the best paintings in the world, and spend nothing.

The most underrated thing about this gallery, and the reason it beats larger museums for a short visit.

The collection is essentially one floor, arranged chronologically from the thirteenth century through to the early twentieth, in a sequence of connected rooms.

That means you can walk it end to end and genuinely see it, which is not true of the British Museum, the V&A or the Louvre.

Roughly two thousand paintings rather than eight million objects.

For anyone tired of museums that defeat them, this is the antidote — a world-class collection that a determined visitor can cover in a morning without skipping anything important.

If you want a shortlist, this is it.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which is the single most visited painting in the building.

Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, voted the nation’s favourite painting more than once.

Constable’s Hay Wain. Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières. Monet’s water lilies and the Thames series.

Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus. Holbein’s Ambassadors, with the distorted skull across the floor. Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.

Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks and the Burlington House cartoon in its own darkened room.

Caravaggio, Rembrandt self-portraits, Titian, Raphael and Piero della Francesca.

Ten paintings, properly looked at, is a better morning than two thousand walked past.

The gallery runs free guided tours and short talks through the day, led by its own staff and volunteers, and they are among the best free things in London.

The daily tour covers a handful of paintings in about an hour and is a genuinely good introduction.

Shorter talks focus on a single work in fifteen or twenty minutes.

Ask at the information desk for what is running when you arrive — times are posted daily and are not heavily advertised.

There are also audio guides available for a modest charge and a free app.

For a first visit, a free staff-led tour is worth more than any amount of independent wandering.

The gallery fronts directly onto Trafalgar Square, which is free, always open, and an attraction in its own right.

Nelson’s Column, the lions, the fountains, and the Fourth Plinth with its rotating contemporary commission.

The steps of the gallery give the best view down Whitehall toward Big Ben.

The square hosts events, protests and seasonal celebrations through the year, which can be spectacular or can make access awkward — worth checking if you are coming on a particular date.

St Martin-in-the-Fields on the corner is free to enter, runs lunchtime concerts, and has a café in its crypt that is better value than anything in the gallery.

Worth looking up. The gallery is a nineteenth-century neoclassical building with a portico facing the square, extended several times since.

The Sainsbury Wing, holding the earliest paintings, is a postmodern addition that caused a famous architectural row when it was built and has recently been remodelled.

Inside, the central halls and the barrel-vaulted galleries are handsome in their own right, and several rooms have been restored to their Victorian hanging colours.

The view from the portico steps across the square is one of the classic London prospects and costs nothing.

For anyone with an hour and no interest in painting, the building and the square alone are worth the stop.

Two hours for a proper visit built around a shortlist.

An hour for a targeted walk to half a dozen paintings.

Three hours if you are working through the chronology room by room, which is entirely possible here.

Add an hour for a ticketed exhibition.

The gallery is open late one or two evenings a week, which is the calmest time to visit and is worth checking against your dates.

It pairs naturally with the National Portrait Gallery next door, which is also free, and with a walk down Whitehall to Westminster.

The month pattern here is unusually flat and winter-weighted: November is the busiest month, with December and August close behind, and April and March the quietest.

That reflects an indoor, all-weather attraction that Londoners and visitors use year round rather than a summer destination.

Within the day, mornings are calmest. The gallery fills through the afternoon and on wet days, as every free indoor attraction in London does.

Late opening evenings are the best-kept secret — a world-class collection with a fraction of the daytime crowd.

The Sunflowers room is busy at all hours; go there first.

Better than a painting gallery sounds, provided the visit is short and targeted.

What works: the Sunflowers, the Holbein skull, the Stubbs horse, and paintings with stories attached rather than technique.

The gallery produces family trails and activity material — ask at the desk.

What does not work: a full chronological circuit in silence.

Forty-five minutes and six paintings is a better introduction than two hours of endurance.

Trafalgar Square immediately outside, with the lions and the fountains, is the release valve, and the crypt café at St Martin-in-the-Fields is a good stop afterwards.

Good. Step-free access is available, lifts serve all levels, and accessible toilets are provided.

Wheelchairs can be borrowed and there are portable seats available for use in the galleries, which matters in a building where seating is limited.

The collection is essentially on one floor, which removes most of the navigation problem.

Trafalgar Square outside is level, though the steps at the front of the building are substantial — the accessible entrance is signposted separately.

The gallery publishes detailed access information and runs relaxed and audio-described sessions.

Charing Cross is a two-minute walk, and Leicester Square, Embankment and Piccadilly Circus are all within five.

The gallery sits at the top of Trafalgar Square, which is the single most connected point in central London.

Next door: the National Portrait Gallery, free, with a rooftop restaurant.

A ten-minute walk down Whitehall takes you past Downing Street and Horse Guards to Westminster and the Abbey.

Covent Garden is five minutes north-east and the South Bank is ten minutes over the Golden Jubilee footbridges.

There is almost no criticism of this gallery in the reviews beyond crowding around the famous paintings.

The thin version: walk in off the square, drift through a dozen rooms without a plan, photograph the Sunflowers over someone’s shoulder, and leave in half an hour having seen a lot of frames.

The good version: pick ten paintings before you go in, ask at the desk about the next free staff-led talk and build around it, go to the Sunflowers first while the room is quiet, walk the chronology from the Sainsbury Wing forward so the story unfolds in order, and come out onto the portico steps for the view down Whitehall.

It is free, it is finishable, and it is the best two hours available in central London.