From St. Paul's Cathedral, we boarded the Underground to get to our next destination for the day, the National Gallery. We got out at the Charing Cross station and exited at Trafalgar Square, where the gallery is.

Trafalgar Square is a destination in its own right, so I should probably say a few things about it. Trafalgar Square didn't exist as anything like itself until 1844. Before that, it was the site of the Royal Mews, which had occupied the area since 1377. "Mews" in this case has nothing to do with baby cats, and is instead an old term referring to the moulting of birds. This comes from the fact that the royal hawks were originally kept here. The hawk facility burned down in 1534 and was replaced by stables, which for some reason retained the "mews" label, instead of being assigned a more informative horse term.

The horses stayed until the 1820's, when George IV had them moved to an estate his father, George III, had purchased in 1761 for use by his wife, Queen Charlotte. The house at the center of the estate was called Buckingham House at the time of its purchase, but George IV decided to convert it into a palace to be used as a principal royal residence (he didn't live to see the project completed – his niece Victoria was the first monarch to live there, starting in 1837). The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace are still home to stables, as well as an assortment of carriages, and now, of course, there are also some very nice automobiles.

Once the Mews had been moved, demolition of the old structures commenced, with the plan of creating a public square. At first, the square was to be named for William IV, who succeeded George to the throne in 1830, but by 1835 the plan changed to naming the square to commemorate the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. In 1838, an idea was proposed to add a monument to the hero of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson. The architect of the square opposed this idea, but was overruled, leading to the construction of Nelson's Column, which was raised in 1843. The column is 169 feet tall and of the Corinthian order, with an 18-foot statue of Nelson at the top. At the base there is a pedestal with four bronze reliefs, made from melted-down French guns, depicting important battles in Nelson's career. In 1867, four immense 7-ton bronze lions were added around the base, each looking out in a different direction from the column.


Today, Trafalgar Square is a magnet for locals as well as tourists. There's the column and the lions, plus two large fountains. There are street performances and non-stop political protests. Occasionally, national celebrations are centered here.

We weren't celebrating anything in particular as we walked through the square. We were only interested in visiting the building that formed its northern border – the National Gallery. We were able to dodge the performers, protesters and other tourists, and eventually found the entrance. Admission turned out to be free, and non-flash photography for non-commercial purposes turned out to be OK.

The National Gallery was first established in 1824 with a collection of 38 paintings. Unlike some other major art museums, the National Gallery did not start with a ready-made royal collection (the British royal art collection remains separate from the National Gallery to the present day) or with a massive donation by a rich and powerful family, but with the purchase by the government of the private collection of a recently-deceased banker. At first the collection was displayed in the banker's former townhouse, but with additional purchases and bequests that started to come in, it soon became apparent that a more spacious facility would be needed.

Construction began in 1832 on a building that would take over the position of the former Royal Mews, with the construction being completed in 1838. At first the National Gallery had to share the building with the Royal Academy of Arts. The collection continued to grow, leading to a need for even more space. As it turned out, the Royal Academy also needed more space, and they ended up moving to another building in 1838. The National Gallery took over the Royal Academy space and over the years added additional space through the construction of new galleries and wings into adjacent property that gradually became free for a variety of reasons. The most recent addition, the Sainsbury Wing, opened in 1991 and occupies the site of a department store that was destroyed in World War II. The museum's collection today would not be considered exceptionally large when compared to those of other major museums, but the quality and breadth (works from the 13th Century through 1900 are included) of the collection are impressive. Visitors appear to agree - the National Gallery is one of the world's most-visited art museums, with more than 5 million annual customers.

We did our part in 2016, wandering enthusiastically through the galleries while taking pictures to share with our Internet friends. The paintings look much better in person, and you should make time to visit yourself if you're ever in London, but here are some of the paintings we liked the most, presented in more or less chronological order.

We'll start with the 15th Century, in northern Europe. Sometimes people think of the Renaissance as being an Italian thing, but it was also alive and well in the north as early as the first half of the 15th Century.


And of course the Italians were busy at the same time, largely in Florence.



They continued through the 16th Century, with Venetians becoming involved as well.





And they weren't standing still in the north:


In the 17th Century, some Spaniards did great work:


Back in the north, artists were picking up on some of the Baroque style that was becoming fashionable in the south, while also developing a style of their own:





In the 18th and 19th Centuries, artists were still working with Baroque to some extent, moving into Rococo. Portraiture and landscapes were becoming more popular also. And British artists were starting to get involved:



Late in the 19th Century, some young French artists started experimenting with their art and came up with a movement that came to be called Impressionism. At first they were scorned and ridiculed, but people eventually got used to the style.



One of the pioneers of Impressionism (the term "Impressionism" actually came from the title of one of his paintings) was Claude Monet, who outlived all of the others, painting waterlilies in his garden well into the 1920's (he lived to be 86). Here's one of his last 19th Century paintings:

This was as far as the National Gallery's collection went, century-wise, and we ended our visit, also ending our activities for the day. We returned to our hotel and found some dinner and formulated our plans for the next day. We would start by looking at some real waterlilies, along with many other exotic plants, at one of the world's great botanical preserves, Kew Gardens.