The Time Out London blog team

If you’ve ever sat on the corner outside Gordon’s Wine Bar or braved a particularly long queue to get into Heaven, you’ll be well-acquainted with the dingy, cramped and pretty unglamorous surroundings of Villiers Street. Now, thanks to a new development at 1 Embankment Place, the building above Charing Cross Station, the narrow road which runs alongside the western side of Charing Cross station from Strand to Embankment station could be getting a much-needed makeover. Hopkins Architects has unveiled plans for the building, which include changes which address ‘concerns around poor public spaces and the narrow, confined feel’ of the road below.  Image: Hopkins Architects Villiers is one of London’s busiest streets, seeing an impressive 3,000 people every hour, according to a study conducted by Space Syntax. That’s more than Bond Street and Cheapside.  Improved frontages to businesses on Villiers Street have been included in the renovations, which seek to add a mix of shops, cafés and leisure spaces to the area. The Arches and Embankment Place, which run underneath the Charing Cross station building, will also be prettied-up by the plans. Plus, stronger, clearer pedestrian links will be created to boost movement between Charing Cross Station, the Embankment, Victoria Embankment Gardens and Villiers Street. Less clogged paths will no doubt come in handy if you’re running late to a matinee in the West End or speeding towards the South Bank. Plans for the building were...

Spring has finally sprung, and as the capital’s parks and gardens start to burst into life, its art scene is also a hive of activity. Some brilliant shows have opened in the last few weeks – there’s Beatriz González at the Barbican, Catherine Opie at the Portrait Gallery and Hurvin Anderson at Tate Britain, to name a few – but it’s about to get even busier for the city’s major galleries and museums.  Alongside the arrival of three massive new venues – V&A East (opening on April 18), the Museum of Youth Culture (opening on May 15) and the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration (also due to open in May) – Londoners can expect loads of brilliant exhibitions on everything from Gilded Age portraitists and monumental sculpture to Baroque masters and avant garde couture. Grab your diary and get planning with our guide to the truly unmissable shows coming up over the next few months.  10 London art exhibitions we’re most excited about in spring 2026 1. Michaelina Wautier at the Royal Academy Until relatively recently, few art historians believed that paintings bearing 17th century artist Michaelina Wautier’s signature could possibly have been made by a woman, instead attributing them to her brother or other male artists. And yet she did it all; flowers and still lifes, portraits and large-scale history paintings, mastering subjects typically reserved for her male peers. Twenty-five pieces feature in this landmark exhibition, the first in the UK to be devoted to this rediscovered...

Drivers: beware. London’s loveliest pink bridge will be closed to all vehicles until 2027, the council has announced.  Albert Bridge, the pink and white structure connecting Battersea with Chelsea, has been closed for repairs since early February 2026. Now an investigation into the bridge – which first opened in 1873 – has found that the structure might be in worse condition than was previously thought. As only one of two London bridges that have never been replaced (along with Tower Bridge), it’s no surprise that that Grade II-listed crossing is in need of some extra care and attention.  Kensington and Chelsea Council has decided that Albert Bridge needs a full repair and will have to be closed for at least another year. The investigation discovered that the cast iron component of the bridge has cracked, affecting a key component that supports a joint between the catenary/cable-stay/edge-girder. This joint is now unstable and is rocking when things like temperature, wind and traffic levels change. Simply: it’s not safe to drive over right now. However, Albert Bridge still fine to cross on foot, and the bridge remains open to pedestrians and cyclists. It’s currently being monitored by sensors that were installed to measure its movements and make sure its condition doesn’t worsen.  The council has now kicked off £8.5 million worth of works that are expected to take around 12 months. It will see the cracked part fully repaired, unseizing the axle in the structural joint that...