Only a handful of London's Art Deco buildings will let you inside on an ordinary weekday, and the best of them is free: Freemasons' Hall in Covent Garden, open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, no ticket. The Hoover Building, Senate House and the old Daily Express offices are exteriors only. The great interiors, at Eltham Palace and inside Battersea Power Station, are paid and need planning.
Art Deco is a loose label. In London it usually means buildings put up between about 1925 and 1939 with flat wall surfaces, stepped or streamlined silhouettes, geometric ornament, and a fondness for materials that were new at the time: black glass, chromium, terrazzo, coloured faience tiles. Some of it is grand. A lot of it is factories, cinemas and suburban Tube stations, which is where London's version of the style is most itself.
The practical problem is access. Most of these buildings are offices, flats or working venues, so the question is never just "where is it" but "will they let me in, and on what day". This page sorts them by that answer.
Where you can actually get inside
- Free, most weeks
- Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street WC2. Museum of Freemasonry, free entry, Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm
- Free, with a valid ticket
- Charles Holden's Piccadilly line stations. The ticket halls are the architecture, and several sit outside the gateline
- Paid, all year
- Eltham Palace (English Heritage) and the guided tour inside Battersea Power Station, which includes the 1930s control room
- Paid, only when something is on
- The Troxy in Limehouse and the cinemas. Buy a ticket to the event and you are in the building
- Exterior only
- The Hoover Building, Senate House, 120 Fleet Street, Greater London House
- Closed
- 66 Portland Place, shut to the public since 1 June 2025 for a refurbishment expected to last about three years
Freemasons' Hall: the one to do first
If you see only one Art Deco interior in London, make it this one. Freemasons' Hall at 60 Great Queen Street was finished in 1933 as a memorial to freemasons killed in the First World War, and it is a full-blooded set piece: bronze doors, a vaulted processional corridor, mosaic, and a Grand Temple behind doors so heavy they are usually shown to visitors as an event in themselves.
The Museum of Freemasonry occupies part of the building and admission is free. It opens 10am to 5pm from Tuesday to Saturday, closes on Mondays and public holidays, and shuts for the Christmas period, from 24 December 2026 to 5 January 2027. The library and south gallery close between 1pm and 2pm every day and all day on Saturday, so if you want the library go on a weekday morning. Access to the Grand Temple and the ceremonial rooms depends on whether they are in use that day; ask at the desk when you arrive rather than assuming.
It is a two-minute walk from Holborn or Covent Garden stations. Because it is free and indoors, it belongs on any wet-weather list for central London, and it fits neatly into an afternoon in Covent Garden.
The biggest Art Deco room in London costs nothing to walk into. Freemasons' Hall charges no admission and takes no bookings from individuals. Turn up between Tuesday and Saturday and the museum, the corridors and usually a good deal more are open to you.
Photo: JRennocks · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The Underground is the largest collection, and it is scattered
Between 1930 and 1935 the architect Charles Holden designed a run of stations for the extended Piccadilly line that are still the most confident modern buildings in outer London: brick drums and boxes with concrete lids, clerestory windows, and bronze-framed ticket halls that were meant to be lit up like lanterns at night.
The five worth the journey are Arnos Grove, Southgate, Oakwood and Boston Manor in the north and west, and Sudbury Town on the Piccadilly's western branch. Arnos Grove is the famous one: a tall brick cylinder with a ring of windows, clearly borrowed from Scandinavian architecture of the same decade. Southgate is the strange one, a low circular drum with a spike on top that looks like a piece of 1930s science fiction dropped into a roundabout.
The good news for visitors is that the interest is almost all in the ticket hall, and at most of these stations the ticket hall sits outside the barriers. You can walk in, look up, and walk out again without touching your card. If you do want to ride the whole run, a day moving between zones 1 and 5 is capped at £15.30 on pay as you go, or £12.80 if you stop at zone 4 and leave Oakwood out (September 2026). Our guides to how the zones work and using the Underground cover the mechanics, and the London Transport Museum explains why the company was commissioning architecture at all.
Do not touch in just to look at Arnos Grove. The ticket hall, which is the part worth seeing, is on the public side of the gateline at most of Holden's stations. Walk in, look at the ceiling and the column, and carry on with your day.
The factories on the arterial roads
London's most photographed Art Deco building is a vacuum cleaner factory beside a dual carriageway in west London. The Hoover Building on Western Avenue in Perivale was designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners and opened in 1933: white render, a green and red faience entrance, and a long band of windows that still looks startling from a passing car.
You cannot go in. The main block was converted into flats and is now private housing; the supermarket built behind it in the late 1980s is a separate building and is not what you came to see. Perivale station on the Central line is a short walk away, and the front of the building is best from the pavement on the north side of the road.
Its neighbours on the arterial roads were the reason the whole style nearly vanished. The Firestone factory on the Great West Road, by the same architects, was knocked down over the August bank holiday weekend in 1980, days before it was due to be given protection. The outcry that followed is still cited as the moment interwar buildings started to be listed in numbers, which is why the Hoover survives at all.
Fleet Street: black glass you can only look at
At 120 Fleet Street stands the old Daily Express building, finished in 1932: a curtain wall of black vitrolite and chromium strips that was unlike anything else in London when it went up, and still stops people in the street. The lobby behind it, with its silvered reliefs and serpentine staircase, is the famous part and is not open to the public.
The site is in the middle of a large redevelopment. The scheme that has permission would open part of the old building as a public space with a roof garden, but no opening date has been published and the surrounding site has been a construction project for some time. Expect hoardings, check nothing is promised, and treat the facade as the whole of the visit. A few doors east, the former Daily Telegraph building of 1928 makes the contrast clear: heavy stone and Egyptian-style columns where the Express is all glass.
Senate House, and how close you can get
Holden's other great commission is the white stone tower of Senate House in Bloomsbury, begun in 1932 for the University of London. It is not a museum and there is no visitor entrance, but it is worth walking to, because the approach from Malet Street gives you the full height of it and almost nobody is ever about.
There is one way in. Senate House Library sells day tickets at the desk from Monday to Saturday during staffed hours. You need photographic identification and current proof of your address, payment is by card only, and the ticket gives you reference access to the open shelves and a seat. Prices changed in August 2026, so check the current figure with the library before you go. This is a reading room, not a tour: go only if you want to sit under the ceilings for an afternoon.
Our guide to Bloomsbury covers the streets around it, most of which are Georgian rather than 1930s.
Cinemas, dance halls and one Egyptian cigarette factory
The reliable way into an Art Deco interior is to buy a ticket to something happening inside it.
The Troxy in Limehouse opened in 1933 as a cinema for three thousand people, survived as a bingo hall and is now a live music and events venue with a capacity of 3,600. The auditorium, the foyer and the staircases are the reason to go; the gig is a bonus. Check what is on and buy for a night when the standing floor is not sold out, so you can move around and look.
The Rio in Dalston is smaller and gentler: a working independent cinema with a 1937 interior, still showing new films every day. A ticket to whatever is on buys you the room. Our guide to Dalston and Stoke Newington covers the area around it. In the West End, the big cinema on the east side of Leicester Square dates from 1937 and keeps its slab-like black facade, which is the most-photographed piece of Deco in Theatreland.
One more exterior is worth a detour if you are already in north London. Greater London House beside Mornington Crescent station was built in 1928 as the Carreras cigarette factory in a full Egyptian-revival style, complete with a pair of large black cats flanking the entrance. It is an office building now, so the visit is a two-minute look from the pavement on your way through Camden Town.
The two interiors that justify a whole afternoon
Two places let you walk through complete 1930s rooms, and both are covered in detail elsewhere on this site rather than here.
Eltham Palace in south-east London is the deeper experience: a millionaire couple's 1930s house built onto a medieval royal hall, with a domed entrance hall lined in marquetry and a dining room with an aluminium-leaf ceiling. It is run by English Heritage, it is ticketed, and it takes most of a day once you add the journey to zone 4.
Inside Battersea Power Station, the 1930s control room survives with its dials and marble panelling, and the guided tour of about 75 minutes is the way to see it. Walking into the shopping floors is free; the control room is not part of that.
What is shut, and the week when everything opens
Two warnings before you plan a route.
66 Portland Place, the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects and one of the best 1930s interiors in central London, closed to the public on 1 June 2025. The refurbishment is expected to take around three years, so do not put it on a 2026 or 2027 itinerary. Travel articles written before the closure still list its café and bookshop.
The other thing to know is that the doors that stay shut all year open for nine days each September. The 2026 edition of the Open House festival ran from 12 to 20 September and dates for 2027 had not been announced when we checked. It is free, it regularly includes Fleet Street lobbies, livery halls and private 1930s interiors, and it is the only realistic way to see several of the buildings on this page from the inside.
A route that works in one day
| Time | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street | Free |
| Late morning | Walk east to 120 Fleet Street and the old Telegraph building | Free, exteriors |
| Early afternoon | Piccadilly line north to Arnos Grove and Southgate, two stops apart | Within the daily cap |
| Late afternoon | Back through Bloomsbury for Senate House from Malet Street | Free, exterior |
| Evening | A film at the Rio, or whatever is on at the Troxy | Ticket price |
Eltham Palace and Battersea do not fit into that day. Give each its own half-day. If you like this sort of looking, our guides to the City's modern towers, the Design Museum and the blue plaque scheme are the natural next steps, and two other pages of ours go after buildings most visitors never reach: the old church behind St Pancras and the private street at Ely Place.
Frequently asked questions
Can you go inside the Hoover Building in Perivale?
No. The main block was converted into private flats and there is no public access or visitor entrance. The building is designed to be seen from the road, and the front elevation from the pavement on Western Avenue is the view everyone photographs. Perivale station on the Central line is the nearest stop.
Which Art Deco building in London is free to go inside?
Freemasons' Hall on Great Queen Street. The Museum of Freemasonry inside it charges nothing and opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm. Charles Holden's Piccadilly line station ticket halls are also free to walk into, because at most of them the interesting part sits outside the ticket barriers.
Is the Daily Express building open to the public?
Not at present. The famous lobby at 120 Fleet Street is behind a security desk and the site forms part of a large redevelopment. The approved scheme promises public access and a roof garden, but no opening date has been published, so plan on seeing the black glass frontage from the street.
When is the best time of year to look at Art Deco buildings in London?
September, because of Open House. For nine days the festival opens interiors that are closed for the rest of the year, and interwar buildings are always well represented. Outside that window, any Tuesday to Saturday works for Freemasons' Hall, and winter afternoons suit the Tube stations, which were designed to look their best lit up after dark.
Is Eltham Palace or Battersea Power Station better for Art Deco?
Eltham Palace, by a clear margin, if you want complete 1930s rooms and are willing to travel to zone 4 and pay for a ticket. Battersea gives you one outstanding room, the original control room, which is reached on a guided tour rather than by wandering in, but the rest of the building is a shopping centre.
Sources
- Museum of Freemasonry – visitor information, opening hours and admission (checked September 2026)
- Royal Institute of British Architects – 66 Portland Place and the House of Architecture programme (checked September 2026)
- Senate House Library, University of London – Day tickets (checked September 2026)
- Troxy, Limehouse – history and what's on (checked September 2026)
- Rio Cinema, Dalston – programme (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London – Daily and weekly fare capping (checked September 2026)