Tate Britain

The ground Tate Britain stands on beside the Thames was once the largest prison in London. Millbank Penitentiary held convicts here, many of them awaiting transport to Australia, until it was demolished around 1890. On the cleared site the sugar magnate Henry Tate, who had offered the nation his own collection of modern British paintings, helped pay for a new gallery, which opened in 1897.

Its subject is British art, from the 16th century to now: Hogarth and Gainsborough, the Pre-Raphaelites, Constable, Stanley Spencer, Francis Bacon and David Hockney, telling the story of art made in these islands under one roof.

At its heart is Turner. When J.M.W. Turner died in 1851 he left the nation the huge contents of his studio, thousands of paintings and works on paper, on the wish that they be kept together. That Turner Bequest finally got a home built for it in 1987, the Clore Gallery, a wing added to one side of the museum, where his storms and burning sunsets hang in daylit rooms overlooking the river he painted so often.