1. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  2. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  3. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  4. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  5. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  6. The Barbican theatre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  7. Barbican theatre's stage (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out
  8. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  9. The Barbican  (Nigel Tradewell for Time Out)
    Nigel Tradewell for Time Out
  10. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  11. The Barbican Centre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out

Barbican Centre

  • Cinemas
  • Barbican
  • Recommended
Alex Sims
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Time Out says

What is it? 

The Barbican Centre lures fans of serious culture into a labyrinthine arts complex, part of a vast concrete estate that also includes 2,000 highly coveted flats and innumerable concrete walkways. It's a prime example of brutalist architecture, softened a little by time and some rectangular ponds housing friendly resident ducks.

The focus is on world-class arts programming, taking in pretty much every imaginable genre. At the core of the music roster, performing 90 concerts a year, is the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), which revels in the immaculately tuned acoustics of the Barbican's concert hall. The art gallery on the third floor stages exhibitions on design, architecture and pop culture, while on the ground floor, the Curve is a free exhibition space for specially commissioned works and contemporary art. The Royal Shakespeare Company stages its London seasons here, alongside the annual BITE programme (Barbican International Theatre Events), which cherry-picks exciting and eclectic theatre companies from around the globe. There's a similarly international offering of ballet and contemporary dance shows. And there's also a cinema, with a sophisticated programme that puts on regular film festivals based around far-flung countries or undersung directors. 

As if that wasn't enough, the Barbican Centre is also home to three restaurants, a public library, and some practice pianos. This cultural smorgasbord is all funded and managed by the City of London Corporation, which sends some of the finance industry's considerable profits its way. It's been in operation since 1982; its uncompromising brutalist aesthetic and sometimes hard-to-navigate, multi-level structure were initially controversial, but it's getting increasingly popular with architecture fans and Instagrammers alike.

Why go? 

As the UK's leading international arts centre, this is the place to get cultured.

Don’t miss: 

The huge, succulent-filled Barbican conservatory is a must-see on your London bucket list. It’s one of the biggest greenhouses in London, second only to Kew Gardens and houses 2,000 plant species, including towering palms and ferns, across an extensive series of concrete terraces and beds. There are even koi carp and terrapins. The atmosphere is almost post-apocalyptically peaceful. It’s open on Sunday and bank holiday Monday afternoons, as well as selected Saturdays. You can even book in for an afternoon tea among the plants. 

When to visit: 

Mon-Friday 8am11pm, Sat-Sun 9am11pm

Ticketing info: 

Free entry, some events and exhibitions are ticketed. 

Time Out tip: 

If I had a pound for every time I’ve tried and failed to find the entrance to the Barbican Centre among its maze of concrete walkways… If you don’t want to risk being late for the performance you’re seeing, look up the entrance you need in advance. Trust me. 

Find more culture in London and discover our guide to the very best things to do in London.

Details

Address
Beech Street
Barbican
London
EC2Y 8AE
Transport:
Tube: Barbican; Rail/Tube: Moorgate
Price:
Prices vary
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What’s on

Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha

4 out of 5 stars
Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha is on fom May 8 until August 10 2025, followed by Mona Hatoum in September and Lynda Benglis in February 2026.  In the Barbican’s new, light-filled gallery, the City of London skyline provides a fitting backdrop for the tall, wiry works of Alberto Giacometti beside the hybrid, fragmented figures of Pakistani-American sculptor Huma Bhabha.  For ‘Encounters’, the Giacometti Foundation lent some of the Swiss artist’s most elemental figures for an exhibition that will evolve in the coming months with responses from other artists, including Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum and American sculptor Lynda Benglis. In the first of the three, Bhabha’s sculptures focus on the fragmented body – but where Giacometti’s figures are stretched and attenuated, expressing solitude and existential suffering, she fractures the human form more explicitly, tearing it apart. Though separated by decades – Giacometti shaped by postwar Europe and Bhabha by postcolonial trauma and global violence after 9/11 – their works share a profound interest in the aftermath of war and the psychological scars left behind, speaking to the bruised and battered bodies that exist beyond the immediate experience of conflict.  Bhabha fractures the human form more explicitly, tearing it apart The exhibition demands a slow and meditative engagement. As visitors move throughout, the sculptors’ works are arranged at shifting heights: frozen in mid-stride or suspended in stillness, some...

Feel the Sound

From screeching tube carriages and blaring rickshaws to the lulling podcast we listen to on our commute and the music that soundtracks our walks, noise is constantly shaping our lives, and in bigger, deeper ways than we might at first realise. The Baribican’s Feel the Sound exhibition promises to be a multi-sensory journey into our personal relationship with sound and an exploration of how the world of listening goes way beyond pure audio. Eleven commissions and installations will take over the Barbican Centre from the entrance on Silk Street to the Lakeside Terrace, all exploding visitors to frequencies, sound, rhythmic patterns and vibrations that define everything around us. Even the Centre’s underground car parks will be part action as it’s transformed into a club space. There’ll also be the chance to sing with a digital quantum choir and experience music without sound. Plus, look out for collabs with Boiler Room celebrating underground club culture, Joyride which will mix ‘boy racer’ subculture with DIY music communities and Nexus Studios which will fuse neuroscience and design to capture visitors’ emotional responses to music. This is ‘an invitation to awaken the senses, embrace our sonic world and discover the sound in each of us’, says the Barbican. Sounds like a hit. Save 25% on tickets, only through Time Out Offers 

Good Night, Oscar

4 out of 5 stars
This new play by American writer Doug Wright comes to the Barbican from Broadway heralded by a 2023 Tony Award for star Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) and is about someone you’ve likely never heard of. Oscar Levant was a pianist – best known for playing George Gershwin’s music – and a humourist, who popped up in a handful of films including An American in Paris.  This play re-imagines the events surrounding his chaotic appearance as a guest on The Tonight Show in 1958. He arrives at the NBC studio, whose boss is already jittery because of Levant’s erratic past behaviour, from a mental institution. His wife, June (Rosalie Craig), has secured a release under false pretences. Talk-show host Jack Paar (Ben Rappaport) wants to capitalise on his penchant for making controversial jokes live on air. His accompanying nurse, Alvin (Daniel Adeosun), is trying to stop him from popping pills. And Levant himself is hallucinating Gershwin.   Focused so tightly on the early days of American TV, this could potentially sound niche for a British audience. But in Wright’s assured hands, the collision of Levant’s private and public life down the barrel of a camera lens becomes a play about the beginning of so many things we now recognise as staples of celebrity culture. He’s famous for all the reasons he doesn’t want to be – as a performer of someone else’s music rather than a composer. He’s wheeled onto chat shows for controversy by people for whom his mental health is something to be exploited....
  • Drama

Barbican Outdoor Cinema

There are few more striking spots to catch a movie than the iconic surrounds of the Barbican Sculpture Court. As usual, the City of London’s temple of the arts has an inventively curated line-up in store for the final week of August. Cineastes can revel in the cult sci-fi extravaganza that is David Lynch’s 1984 ‘Dune’, while music lovers have an outdoor screening of Björk’s mesmerising new concert movie ‘Cornucopia’. Standard tickets are £18 (£12 for under-25s and £10 for under-18s) and there’s street food to feast on while you sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 
  • Film events

Raymond Gubbay Christmas Festival

Classical music impresario Raymond Gubbay presents his annual handpicked selection of music for the festive season. Highlights include the Christmas carol singalong (Dec 20), Gustav Holsts’s The Planeys (Dec 27), Beethoven's Ninth (Dec 29), the music of Zimmer vs Williams, featuring scores from  ‘Star Wars’, ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘Interstellar’(Dec 31), and the New Year's Day Proms. All set to take place in the Barbican's lovely hall, these musical picks are a classy, Christmassy way to spend an evening. 
  • Concerts
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