The National Gallery is the large building that dominates the north side of Trafalgar Square and houses a huge collection of paintings by the Old Masters, its also free to the public. In case visitors and Londoners alike have forgotten what’s in the National Gallery, they’ve decided to take their art to the people in an event called The Grand Tour.
It involves hanging 45 expertly done reproductions of paintings in the National onto the walls of buildings in the Soho and Covent Garden areas of central London. They’ll be on show for the next twelve weeks and the Grand Tour website has a handy interactive map that has the locations of all the paintings marked, simply move your cursor over them to get details of what the painting’s called, the painter, where its hanging and some history about it.
There are also seven tour maps you can print off, from the full Grand Tour with 45 paintings to ones with titles like Lunchbreak Tour 1, which features only 10 pictures that you could easily get round to see in your lunch hour. Each tour has an accompanying MP3 audio guide that you can download. Among the artists whose work will be on show are van Gogh, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Constable and many others.
The National Gallery is also asking for your input by building a public photo gallery of Grand Tour images. So if you see someone admiring one of the paintings hung around London, take a picture and email it into them.
{ 1 comment }
wow.. a tour that is fit for travel royalties. =)
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