Museums & Galleries

Tate Modern London

London, United Kingdom
Tate Modern London

London, United Kingdom

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A former power station where modern art feels electric. Tate Modern is one of London’s essential art experiences: vast, free, industrial, global, and always connected to the cultural pulse of the city.

Tate Modern, located on the banks of the Thames River in London, stands as an iconic symbol of contemporary art.

Located on Bankside, beside the Thames and opposite St Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern is the UK’s national museum of international modern and contemporary art. It is housed in the former Bankside Power Station, transformed into a museum by Herzog & de Meuron and opened in 2000.

The building is part of the experience: the monumental Turbine Hall, the industrial brick façade, the river walk, the Millennium Bridge, and the feeling that art is not separated from the city but plugged directly into it. Tate Modern’s collection focuses on art from 1900 to today, with free collection displays and ticketed temporary exhibitions.

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What you’ll see here

At Tate Modern, you move through modern and contemporary art as a living language: abstraction, surrealism, performance, installation, photography, video, politics, identity, bodies, machines, landscapes, and new ways of seeing.

You may experience:

  • International modern and contemporary art
  • Large-scale installations in the Turbine Hall
  • Painting, sculpture, photography, film, performance and new media
  • Free collection displays
  • Major temporary exhibitions
  • The Tanks, live art and experimental programming
  • One of London’s best museum-river experiences

Worth the trip

Absolutely. Tate Modern is one of the strongest art reasons to travel to London.

What makes it special is its mix of accessibility and ambition: a world-class contemporary art museum with free collection access, inside one of the most iconic museum buildings of the 21st century. It can feel crowded, yes — but it also feels alive.

For Artlovers, Tate Modern is essential because it shows art as something restless and public: not only beauty, but ideas, conflict, technology, identity, memory and the present moment unfolding in real time.

ArtLovers Tip

Enter through the Turbine Hall and pause before going upstairs. Tate Modern is not only about the artworks — it is about scale, energy, architecture, and the feeling that contemporary art belongs to public life.

Tate Modern is currently open Sunday to Thursday, 10:00–18:00, and Friday to Saturday, 10:00–21:00. General admission to the collection is free, while some exhibitions require tickets.

The best way to enjoy it is not to try to “finish” it. Give yourself 2–3 hours, choose a route, and leave space for the Turbine Hall. It works beautifully combined with a walk across the Millennium Bridge, Southbank, Borough Market, or Shakespeare’s Globe.

On show now

Exhibitions at Tate Modern London

From the collection

Collection at Tate Modern London (5)

London, United Kingdom

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