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Culture venues in London

10 places from the A Reason to Stop library. Pick one to see what makes it worth a stop, then take the whole list with you in the free app.

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  • Battersea Arts CentreA theatre and arts centre in the 1893 former Battersea Town Hall, where new work is tried out on audiences and most shows can be booked pay what you can.
  • Electric Cinema PortobelloAn Edwardian cinema on Portobello Road, opened in 1910 as one of Britain's first purpose-built picture houses, still showing films with a fully licensed bar.
  • Hackney EmpireA Grade II* listed music hall on Mare Street, designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1901, and still a working theatre.
  • Kiln TheatreA 292-seat theatre and cinema on Kilburn High Road, known for its dramatised public-inquiry 'tribunal plays' and renamed from the Tricycle Theatre in 2018.
  • Marx Memorial LibraryA Grade II listed 1738 building on Clerkenwell Green, now a library and archive of the labour movement, with guided tours of Lenin's former office and a 1935 fresco.
  • Phoenix CinemaA charity-run independent cinema in East Finchley that opened in 1912 as the East Finchley Picturedrome and is one of the oldest cinemas in the UK still showing films.
  • Prince Charles CinemaAn independent repertory cinema just off Leicester Square, known for cult and classic films on 35mm and 70mm, sing-alongs and all-night marathons.
  • Royal Opera HouseCovent Garden's home of The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, with a Victorian glass-roofed hall that anyone can walk into for a drink or a look.
  • Saatchi GalleryA contemporary art gallery in the former Duke of York's Headquarters off the King's Road, spread across 15 exhibition spaces and 70,000 square feet.
  • Serpentine SouthA free contemporary art gallery in a 1930s former tea pavilion in Kensington Gardens, and the home of a new architect-designed summer pavilion each year.

Other kinds of place