National Portrait Gallery

The first gallery anywhere devoted entirely to portraits, the National Portrait Gallery has collected likenesses of notable Britons since its founding in 1856. Sitters are chosen for who they were rather than who painted them, so the walls form a kind of illustrated national biography, from monarchs and statesmen to writers, scientists, performers and campaigners.

The displays run roughly chronologically, beginning with the Tudors. Highlights include the Chandos portrait, long thought to show Shakespeare and the gallery's first acquisition; Hans Holbein's cartoon of Henry VIII; the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I; and Branwell Brontë's painting of his sisters. Later rooms move through the Victorians and the twentieth century to the present, with photography and contemporary commissions alongside painting and sculpture.

The gallery occupies a building on St Martin's Place, just off Trafalgar Square and beside the National Gallery. It draws more than two million visitors a year and particularly rewards anyone interested in British history, literature and the faces behind familiar names.