Overview
The National Gallery has one of the world’s greatest painting collections, and it’s entirely free to enter. On this self-guided audio tour, you’ll explore over 700 years of European art through the eyes of James Payne, creator of the Great Art Explained channel and book, who cuts through the jargon to reveal what makes these works genuinely thrilling. The tour starts at the Sainsbury Wing entrance on Trafalgar Square. You’ll move through the gallery’s earliest rooms, where Leonardo da Vinci’s only surviving full-scale drawing and his mysterious Virgin of the Rocks reveal how he built compositions before touching paint. From there, you’ll encounter Flemish masters, Renaissance giants, Dutch Golden Age intimacy, and the explosive colour of Impressionism – all of which trace how Western painting transformed across five centuries.
- Lifetime access to this tour in English before your booking date and after it
- Offline access to audio, maps, and geodata
- App for Android and iOS
- Flexibility to explore at your own pace with a self-guided GPS tour
- Directions to the starting point so that when you’re in the right place, the tour will start
