Moments from Waterloo Place

This formal square just off Regent Street in central London has been a gathering point for public monuments since the early nineteenth century, the Duke of York Column looming over one end, statues of Florence Nightingale and Scottish explorer John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition standing among a cluster of Crimean War memorials. In 2026, the square gained an unexpected and much newer addition: a Banksy sculpture that appeared there overnight, confirmed by the artist himself, a jarring, deliberately provocative intervention into a space otherwise dedicated entirely to Victorian and Edwardian commemorative statuary.

The contrast is worth seeking out specifically: walking from the Duke of York Column and its formal nineteenth-century memorials directly to whatever Banksy left behind makes a genuinely pointed statement about who gets commemorated in public space, and how, across two very different centuries of British public monument-making. Check current news for the sculpture's status before visiting, works that appear in public space without permission are sometimes removed, relocated, or protected behind barriers relatively quickly after their unveiling.