Price: Starting from USD $78.86 per personDuration: 3 - 3.5 hours
This Private London Walking Tour begins at No.1 London the name given to Apsley house. The first house on Piccadilly, it was built by Adams in 1775 for Baron Apsley and acquired by the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Napoleon, in 1817. He aggrandized the house with the help of architect Wyatt who gave it the handsome Corinthian temple front and faced it in gold bath stone.
As you enter the house you will see in the inner hall, the nude marble statue by Canova of Napoleon in the guise of Apollo. Also called the Wellington Museum, here you will find the treasures given to the Duke by European monarchs returned to their thrones after the defeat of Napoleon. See amazing silver and porcelain sets, jewels and snuff boxes surrounded by the Duke's furniture.
In the upstairs rooms are paintings which the Duke collected and 165 superb old masters from the Royal Spanish collection found in Giuseppe Bonaparte's coach as he was abandoning Madrid (these were given to Wellington by the King of Spain). Among them in the Waterloo Galleries, are paintings by Velazquez, Rubens, Murillo, Ribera, Correggio and Goya.
Walking along Knightsbridge you reach Victoria and Albert Museum, London's Victorian center of Art and Crafts dedicated to the royal couple who did so much to support them. It is now a Museum of Arts from all countries, styles and periods. Apart from the main collection of oil paintings, watercolors, sculpture and architectural examples, the Museum contains the world's finest collection of applied arts.
You will visit the famous Cartoons for tapestries which Raphael created in 1516 for Pope Leo X, the sculpture gallery collection where there are some of the best examples of Donatello, Bernini, Canova, medieval and neoclassical sculpture. The plaster cast courts where famous pieces of European sculpture like Michelangelo's David and the Column of Trajan are magnificently replicated.
