National Portrait Gallery

When it was founded in 1856 it was the first gallery anywhere devoted to portraits, built on an unusual rule: a picture got in for who it showed, not for who painted it or how good it was. The very first work acquired was the Chandos portrait, the likeness with the gold earring that has the strongest claim of any to show William Shakespeare from life.

From there the walls become a face-to-face history of Britain, Tudor monarchs and Elizabeth the First, the Brontë sisters and scientists, right up to living musicians and footballers.

The gallery reopened in 2023 after a three-year rebuild that turned it around to a new entrance on the north side, its bronze doors cast with the faces of women by the artist Tracey Emin.