Two Temple Place is a small late-Victorian mansion on the Embankment, built for William Waldorf Astor between 1892 and 1895, and for about three months of the year anyone can walk into it for nothing. The next free opening runs from 23 January to 18 April 2027, when the exhibition Gathering Rest fills the ground floor. Outside that window the only way in is a £12 guided tour, and those sell out.
It is not really a museum, which is why it sits oddly in our survey of London's small museums. It is an office built as a fantasy, and the charity that owns it, the Bulldog Trust, uses the exhibition season as its way of opening the doors. The art on the walls changes every year and comes on loan from public collections around Britain. The building does not change, and the building is why you go.
That makes it a different kind of visit from anything else in central London. There is no permanent collection, no café for most of the year, and nothing to see at all for months at a time. What there is, for a few weeks each winter, is one of the most elaborately decorated interiors in London, with free admission and hardly any queue.
Two Temple Place: the practical frame
- Address
- Two Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD, on the Victoria Embankment just east of Temple station
- Admission
- Free during the annual exhibition. Free on the building's Open House days in September. £12 for a guided building tour at other times.
- Next free opening
- Gathering Rest, 23 January to 18 April 2027
- Booking
- Not needed for the exhibition. Essential for the £12 tours, which are released in batches and sell out.
- How long
- About an hour, whether you come for the art or the ceilings. The guided tour is scheduled for an hour with time for questions.
- Nearest stations
- Temple (Circle and District) is closest. Embankment, Blackfriars, Charing Cross and Holborn are all within walking distance.
- Getting in
- A short flight of stone steps to the front door, with a stair climber for wheelchair users. A lift serves every floor inside.
When the doors are actually open
This is the part that trips people up, because the building has no ordinary opening hours at all. There are three ways in during a normal year.
The exhibition is the main one. Almost every year since 2011 the Trust has shown a borrowed collection here from late January until mid-April, free of charge, and 2027 follows the pattern with Gathering Rest. During the 2026 exhibition the hours were closed on Mondays, 11am to 6pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11am to 9pm on Wednesdays, and 11am to 4.30pm on Sundays. The 2027 timetable had not been published when we checked, so use those as a guide and confirm on the official visit page before travelling.
The second way in is the September architecture weekend, when the building opens free without an exhibition. In 2026 those days were Sunday 13 and Sunday 20 September. Our guide to the Open House Festival explains how the weekend works and why the popular buildings need booking weeks ahead.
The third is the paid tour, described below. Beyond that, the building is a commercial venue: weddings, dinners, filming and corporate events pay for the charitable programme, and on those days nobody else gets in.
Late January is the month to aim for. The free exhibition opens in the third or fourth week of January and runs to mid-April, which puts the building's best weeks in the emptiest part of the tourist year. Our guide to London in winter has the rest of that season.
Photo: JRennocks · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The £12 building tour, and why it sells out
Between exhibitions the Trust runs guided tours of the house itself. They cost £12, last an hour with time for questions, and are announced on the What's On page a few weeks at a time. Doors open fifteen minutes before the start. When the Trust schedules a tour day it usually runs five of them, from 10am through to a 4pm start, and several of the recent dates show as sold out.
The tour is better value than the price suggests, because a guide is the only way to make sense of the carvings. Without one you will admire a frieze of heads in the Great Hall and never learn that they are literary characters chosen by Astor himself, several of them tragic heroines whose intended names survive only in an annotated photograph in a sculptor's archive.
Groups can book privately by arrangement, and London community groups can ask for a free visit. If you are a wheelchair user, ring ahead: the stair climber at the front steps has weight and size limits and the manufacturer advises against using it in icy weather.
Astor, Pearson and three years of work
William Waldorf Astor was born into the richest family in America, moved to England in 1891, and spent a fortune on English property. He bought this patch of the new Victoria Embankment in 1892, at which point it held a warehouse belonging to a firm of pumping engineers. He commissioned John Loughborough Pearson, a church architect then at the end of a long career, and the building was finished in 1895.
It was never a house in the ordinary sense. Astor used it as his estate office, under the name Astor House, with a private apartment upstairs that he used more after he was widowed. His sons sold it soon after his death in 1919, and it passed through a Canadian insurance company and a body of accountants before the Bulldog Trust took it on in 1998.
The war did real damage. A parachute mine that destroyed the Middle Temple library in 1940 also brought down the ceiling here, and a flying bomb next door in 1944 wrecked the entrance and the west wing. Much of the sculptor William Silver Frith's exterior stonework on the portico was lost and never replaced. The reconstruction, led by Sir Percy Thomas, was careful and expensive at a time when comparable buildings were simply demolished. Astor's other English projects make a useful comparison if you have time for a day out: Hever Castle in Kent was his other great restoration, and the white marble fireplace that once stood in the library here is now at Cliveden.
What to look at once you are inside
The Trust credits its "makers" by name, which is unusual and helps you know where to look.
| What | Where | Who made it |
|---|---|---|
| Bronze lamp standards, with Astor's own choice of imagery | Outside the front door | William Silver Frith |
| Listed railings and a gilded nautical weathervane | The street front and the roof | John Starkie Gardner |
| Benches carved with mermaids and lions, and figures from Ivanhoe | The Great Hall | Nathaniel Hitch |
| East and west windows: a Swiss sunrise and an Italian sunset, each treated as one picture rather than separate panels | The Great Hall | Clayton and Bell |
| Stained-glass skylight with the date 1895 at its centre | Over the staircase | Clayton and Bell |
| Panelling of muses and putti in finely grained woods | The Library | William Silver Frith |
The scale is domestic rather than palatial, which is the point. You can take in the whole building in an hour without feeling that you have skipped anything, and that is rare in London. If the idea of a house where the interior is the exhibit appeals, Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields and Sir John Soane's Museum in Holborn work on the same principle and open far more often.
Access, bags and facilities
The front door is reached by a short flight of stone steps. Wheelchair users are carried up on a stair climber with a total weight limit of 200 kg, which takes chairs up to 88 cm long and 70 cm wide; the Trust asks you to telephone before visiting so that staff are ready. Once inside, a lift reaches every floor and there is an adapted toilet on the ground floor. Assistance dogs are welcome, and sensory bags and ear defenders can be collected from reception during exhibitions and open days.
There is an unstaffed cloakroom, but nothing larger than cabin size, 55 by 40 by 25 cm, is allowed in the building. If you are arriving with luggage, our left-luggage guide covers the alternatives; the Trust points visitors to Charing Cross. A café operates during the exhibition season only, which in 2026 meant Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm.
A free digital guide to the building runs on the Bloomberg Connects app, with screen reader support, adjustable text, transcripts and translation. Download it before you arrive and bring headphones. Large-print label books are put out in each room during exhibitions.
Do not turn up on spec. Two Temple Place is shut to the public for most of the year and is often in use as a private venue, with nothing on the door to tell you so. Check the What's On page the week you plan to visit, not the month before.
Getting there, and what is next door
Temple station, on the Circle and District lines, is the closest, with Embankment, Blackfriars, Charing Cross and Holborn all within a walk. Buses along the Strand include the 9, 15, 23, 26, 76, 87 and 341. There is a Santander Cycles docking station on Arundel Street near Temple station, and you may lock a bike to the internal gates in the courtyard, though not to the listed railings on the pavement side.
The building sits at the edge of legal London. Temple Church and the Inns of Court are immediately behind it through the lanes, and the Royal Courts of Justice are five minutes up the hill on the Strand. Somerset House is the next great building west along the Embankment, with the Courtauld Gallery inside it. Put together, that is a good half-day on foot, most of it free; see our list of things to do in London that cost nothing.
The Trust also lends the building to other organisations. In September 2026 it hosted a site-responsive opera as part of the river festival covered in our guide to Totally Thames, at £20 a ticket. Two more London buildings that open on a handful of days and reward the effort are the Victorian testing works in Southwark and the Brunel shaft at Rotherhithe. Anyone planning around access should also read our accessible London guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Two Temple Place free to visit?
The annual exhibition is free, and so are the September architecture open days. Guided building tours outside those periods cost £12. The Trust says explicitly that donations and memberships are what keep the exhibitions free, so the box by the door is worth a note.
When is Two Temple Place open in 2027?
The exhibition Gathering Rest runs from 23 January to 18 April 2027, and that is the long free opening. Guided tours are scheduled on selected days through the autumn of 2026 and are listed on the building's What's On page a few weeks at a time.
How long does a visit to Two Temple Place take?
About an hour. The public rooms occupy two floors and the building is small by London standards, so an hour covers both the exhibition and the decoration. The guided tour is timetabled for an hour including questions.
Can you visit Two Temple Place in a wheelchair?
Yes, with notice. The front steps are managed with a stair climber that takes chairs up to 88 cm by 70 cm and a combined weight of 200 kg, and the manufacturer advises against using it in icy conditions. Inside, a lift reaches all floors and there is an adapted toilet on the ground floor. Telephone before you travel.
What is Two Temple Place used for the rest of the year?
It is a working charity headquarters and a commercial venue. Weddings, dinners, product launches and filming pay for the exhibition and community programmes, which is why the public calendar is so short. The building is not open to casual visitors between events.
Sources
- Two Temple Place – Visit Us (checked September 2026)
- Two Temple Place – What's On, including building tour dates and prices (checked September 2026)
- Two Temple Place – Exhibitions and exhibition programming (checked September 2026)
- Two Temple Place – History and timeline (checked September 2026)
- Two Temple Place – The Makers of Two Temple Place (checked September 2026)
- Two Temple Place – Accessibility (checked September 2026)