Moments from Serpentine Galleries

The two Serpentine galleries sit a few hundred meters apart in Kensington Gardens, and their buildings are almost as much the story as what's inside them. Serpentine South occupies a 1934 tea pavilion, a modest brick building that became an exhibition space almost by accident in 1970. Serpentine North, formerly the Sackler Gallery, is a former gunpowder store from the early nineteenth century that Zaha Hadid converted in 2013, wrapping the historic brick building in a swelling white extension that looks, depending on who you ask, either like a wave or a tent caught mid-collapse.

Since 2000, the Serpentine has commissioned a temporary summer pavilion from a different architect each year who has never before built in England, a program that has become one of the most closely watched events in architecture, past pavilions came from Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Ai Weiwei working with Herzog & de Meuron. If you're visiting between June and October, check whether that year's pavilion is up, it's usually the single best reason to make the trip, a piece of temporary architecture you can walk into and sit inside rather than just look at. Both galleries are free, and Kensington Gardens around them is worth the walk regardless of what's on.