Is this London’s best kept cultural secret? A royal palace turned parking lot is reinventing itself — again

Somerset House has been a key part of London’s landscape for hundreds of years, with its grand architecture and prominent position close to the River Thames and the Covent Garden area.

But its leaders say its current role as a center for arts and culture is not fully understood, with one even describing it as “London and the U.K.’s best-kept secret.”

While its courtyard is well known as a striking venue for a winter ice rink and summer movie screenings, people are less aware that hundreds of artists and creatives work within its walls.

And as it approaches 25 years in its most recent guise, the organization wants to raise its profile — in 2025, there will be a raft of exhibitions and events aiming to show off its artistic endeavors.

“There wasn’t a … moment when Somerset House was revealed in its full glory. And, in a way, next year is a kind of belated moment to do that,” said Jonathan Reekie, director of the Somerset House Trust, the organization that preserves the building and its activities for the public.

Somerset House has had many transformations. Queen Elizabeth I lived there in the 16th century, and since then it has been a Navy headquarters, a home for the Royal Academy of Arts and a newspaper tax office, before being completely rebuilt in 1801.

“In the … 1770s, 1780s, [King] George III needed to build an ‘office block’ for his newly formed civil service. So, this is what he built,” Reekie said as he took CNBC on a tour.

With four large wings surrounding the large, cobbled courtyard (plus a “new” wing added in the 19^th century), the striking Renaissance property housed the multiple offices of the U.K. government’s tax and excise authority for more than 150 years — and in more recent times, the courtyard was even covered with asphalt and used as a parking lot.

In 1997, the house gained charitable status after a long campaign led by author and newspaper editor Simon Jenkins and philanthropist Lord Rothschild. “When Somerset House … opened to the public in May 2000, this building was still mostly full of civil servants,” Reekie said.

“My predecessors basically had to negotiate with each government department to get rid of them,” he said. The tax authority — now known as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — finally closed its Somerset House office in 2011.

Its current role is that of a “self-sustaining home to cultural innovators,” according to Somerset House Trust chair Gail Rebuck, speaking at an event in September. But its varied facets are not always well understood, she said. When a fire broke out in August, there was an “outpouring of concern,” Rebuck said, but “people struggled to describe Somerset House,” she said of news reports at the time. “That’s our fault, in a way, and something we want to correct … We’re a very special creative cluster,” Rebuck said.

“It’s also London and the U.K.’s best-kept secret … it’s really important that the 3 million visitors who come through our doors actually know what goes on underneath,” she said — Somerset House was the U.K.’s 10th most-visited attraction in 2023, with 2.7 million visits according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.

Rebuck referred to the network of rooms and areas that are home to multiple artists and creatives who work from the building, in offices, co-working places and studios.

When Reekie joined the organization in 2014, he was asked what Somerset House should “be.” “Part of the question in terms of how would it work as a cultural space is: what can you do with lots of rooms?” he said.

One of Reekie’s first jobs was to transform what was essentially a long corridor of government offices into rooms that would be desirable to artists — which now make up Somerset House Studios — raising money to do so from scratch. The artists’ rent is subsidized by Somerset House’s activities: It makes most of its income — £21.2 million ($27.5 million) for the financial year ending March 31, 2023 — from its own events like the ice rink and arts exhibitions curated in-house, as well as from hiring spaces to other organizations such as the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

There are now around 60-70 artists, teams or collectives working in Somerset House Studios, overseen by director Marie McPartlin.

The studios’ first resident in 2016 was British fashion designer Gareth Pugh, and composer Anna Meredith was its second, with many others working in the visual arts. “Most of them are doing socially-engaged work … or engaging with emergent, evolving and advanced technologies,” McPartlin said. Artists are encouraged to collaborate — one high-profile name was turned down a studio place because of concerns that they would not have been on site enough of the time.

“The community is the most important thing,” McPartlin said. “The majority of artists don’t have gallery representation — it’s such a precarious existence … really quickly, we realized that long-term support is something Somerset House was able to offer.” Artists are resident for between one and seven years, with some on site for up to 10 years.

In 2025, McPartlin will curate sculpture “The Spell or The Dream” by Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani, a resident of the studios, which will sit at the courtyard’s center in August and September. Inspired by a sleeping beauty-type figure, it will reflect “on the urgent contemporary issues of our time,” according to a release.

McPartlin will also curate an artwork by resident artists Lydia Ourahmane and Sophia Al Maria, which will explore the idea of the “right to remain,” according to a release, while BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and resident Akinola Davies Jr will screen a new movie in the courtyard that will look at the “everyday rituals” of black life in the U.K.

Other highlights for 2025 will include “Salt Cosmologies,” an installation that will map out India’s Inland Customs Line, the extraordinary story of a 2,500 mile-long hedge put in place by the British East India Company to enforce its Salt Tax in the late 19th century. And an immersive exhibition by choreographer Wayne McGregor, named “Infinite Bodies,” will be the culmination of Somerset House’s 25-year celebration.

Near the studios is Makerversity, a community of about 300 designers and makers, who share a wood workshop, photography studio and other “maker” spaces tucked close to the underside of Waterloo Bridge, at the far west border of Somerset House. And there is also The Exchange, a co-working space for creatives, and the Black Business Residency, a program for black entrepreneurs.

“Having great artists in the center of London seems quite essential … the thinking was to make it completely interdisciplinary,” Reekie said.