Southbank Centre

The Southbank Centre is an arts complex on the Thames’s south bank between Hungerford and Waterloo Bridges. It sits beside the National Theatre and BFI Southbank, sharing the riverside walkway known as The Queen’s Walk. The site once stretched for twenty-one acres from County Hall to Waterloo Bridge, though part of the land now forms Jubilee Gardens. The centre’s main buildings are the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, with the Hayward Gallery and National Poetry Library nearby. It is Britain’s largest arts centre, hosting around 3.7 million visitors and 5,000 performances each year. The centre’s brutalist architecture is recognised for its bold concrete forms, shared with the Barbican Centre. Three to four major art exhibitions appear annually in the Hayward Gallery. The Royal Festival Hall is the only survivor of the 1951 Festival of Britain, built to lift national spirits after the war. The Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room opened in the mid-1960s, followed by the Hayward Gallery in 1968. The complex once relied on elevated walkways that proved awkward for visitors, later removed to restore ground-level movement. Inside, the Royal Festival Hall’s auditorium was rebuilt to improve classical music acoustics and seating. New shops and restaurants line the hall’s riverside frontage, with public squares added around the building. The Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall once faced plans for a glass-roofed extension, but these were abandoned. The skate park beneath Queen Elizabeth Hall, where British skateboarding began, remains a lively undercroft space. Visitors find cafes, bookshops and wide views over the river, framed by Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges.