Everyone visiting London goes to Buckingham Palace to see the famous Changing of the Guard, but the palace is also renowned for the Queen’s Gallery and should be on very visitor’s “must be seen” list.

During the Blitz of 1941 the palace’s chapel was destroyed by a bomb, and when reconstruction began, it was decided not to rebuild the chapel, but to create a Royal Museum, so that people could see items from the Royal Collection, the art and treasures that belong to the nation and are held in trust by the Crown.

The Gallery was opened to the public in 1962 and presents rotating exhibitions of clothing, decorative art, furniture, paintings, photographs, porcelain and sculptures. In all over 450 items are on display at any given time. If you are visiting with children, do take advantage of the Family Activity Bag, which is full of activities, challenges and games which are very popular and help children to understand the exhibits in a fun way.

In the Gallery shop you can buy catalogues and gifts that include, of course, mugs, postcards, t-shirts and other souvenirs. Taking photos or filming inside the gallery is strictly forbidden and visitors are asked to turn off their mobile phones.

The collection in the gallery is really marvellous, but if you are hoping to see the Crown Jewels, you will have to go to the Tower of London!

The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms are located under the Treasury in what was once a secret underground bunker during World War II. You shouldn’t miss this excellent museum, whose entrance you will find on King Charles Street.

The bunker was built in 1938 and expanded during the War, with a bomb-proof ceiling added in 1940. The area is huge – over 30,000 square feet, made up of offices, War Rooms, conference rooms and sleeping quarters for the Wartime Cabinet and their families.

At the end of the war, everyone simply moved out, taking personal possessions, but leaving everything else, and you can visit the bunker, which is left pretty much was it was in 1945. Of course it has been cleaned up and fitted out with 21st century mod cons, to make the visit an agreeable and interesting experience.

The museum is self-supporting, so you will have to pay to visit it, unless you have a London Pass, in which case it is free. The price includes an audio headset which will give you interesting and useful information about the room you are in and its exhibits.

Perhaps the most moving part of the bunker is the Cabinet War Rooms, where you will find the desks, telephones, charts and maps used by the government during the War. Close inspection of the maps will reveal thousands of tiny holes left by markers used to show the changing Ally lines and the movements of convoys. Doodles and graffiti on some of the maps paint picture of the stress of living in the bunker and of the war.

The Churchill Museum, with artefacts, letters, paintings and clothes belonging to the greatest of all British Prime Ministers, will tell you about his early life, his political career, the period covering the famous “Gathering of the Storm” and his later years.

No-one can leave this museum without being moved and without understanding, perhaps for the first time, the enormous sacrifice made by the millions of people who lived and fought during the darkest period of the world’s history.

London is the home of a great number of museums, galleries and historical buildings, some of which are a bit overwhelming and heavy going; so if you want to spend an afternoon in a light hearted way, don’t miss the National Portrait Gallery in St Martin’s Place, just off Trafalgar Square.

The great thing about this gallery, opened in 1856, is that the caricatures, drawings, paintings and sculptures haven’t been chosen for the great names of their creators, but for their rarity value – some of them aren’t even very good, but no matter, they are great fun and will cheer up every inspiring artist.

There are, of course, several great works, such as the “Chandos portrait”, depicting (perhaps) Shakespeare executed in around 1610 and Holbein’s portrait of King Henry VIII. There is an audio guide for 170 of the 120,000 strong collection. You can also admire portraits of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Nelson, Charles Dickens Lord Byron and a self portrait by Winston Churchill.

Since 1969 portraits of living people have been allowed in the gallery and among these you will find photos of Mick Jagger and Tony Blair and a painting of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.

There are also temporary exhibitions of Contemporary Art, exhibitions dedicated to individual artists and the Annual BP Portrait Prize competition. Visitors are not allowed to film or take photos in the gallery.

Thinking of taking in a play during your stay in London? If you want to see a light comedy the best place to find it is at the Garrick Theatre on Charing Cross Road.

The theatre was designed by Walter Emden and C.J. Phipps who had some troubles with the construction as they found an underground river while excavating the foundations of the building. This held work up for some months, but eventually the problem was solved and the theatre opened its doors in 1889.

They might have gone a bit over the top with the interior, which is in Italian Renaissance style and has a lot of cupids and laurels depicted in gilt and classical statues in the auditorium, but the Foyer Bar with its elegant lounge is very welcoming. There is a rather fine portrait of David Garrick, the theatre’s namesake, here. The Circle Bar also has a comfortable lounge and a covered balcony overlooking Charing Cross Road. The floors of the bars are delicate marquetry, while the floor in the vestibule is covered with mosaic.

The theatre has a capacity of 656, which makes it a rather small playhouse, but the seats are on three levels, so it’s not cramped. It is a receiving house, which means that it receives touring theatre companies, rather than put on its own repertoire. The shows are usually comedies and comedy/dramas rather than Shakespearian plays, which might seem a bit odd, as David Garrick was a noted Shakespearian actor!

Designed by Frank Matchum for Oswald Stoll, the famous impresario, the London Coliseum was intended to be, and still is the best and largest “People’s Palace” for entertainment. You will find it on St Martin’s Lane, and whether you decide to take in a show, or go on the guided tour, you shouldn’t miss visiting this magnificent opera house.

The vast auditorium with seats for over 2300 people was built on four floors: Stalls, Dress Circle, Grand Tier and Balcony. There is no Pit, which was unheard of in that time. In late Victorian times, the Pit was an area of Stalls set away from the main Stalls, where the lower classes were crowded together. Oswald Stoll wanted none of that – his theatre was intended to be a family theatre.

It opened in 1904 and quickly became the most popular variety theatre and music hall in the capital, partly because the seats weren’t very expensive. During World War II it was used as a canteen for the Air Raid Patrol and Winston Churchill gave a speech from the stage. After 1945 it was mainly used for American musicals. In 1961 it became a Cinerama Theatre.

In 1968 it reverted to its original use and is now the home of the English National Opera Company. It has the widest proscenium arch in London, being 55ft wide and 34ft high. There is a lift for the disabled and a lovely roof garden.

Here’s a small anecdote: At the beginning of the 20th century, the Theatre Managers Association didn’t allow dramas to be performed in music halls. Oswald Stoll fought against this and eventually the TMA relaxed its rules – a little. Dramas could be staged, but should be no longer than 30 minutes and have no more than 6 speaking characters. The first drama for music hall was written by W.S. Gilbert, the dramatist, best known for his Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. It was a one-act play called “The Hooligan” and was performed at the Coliseum for the first time in 1911.

The Courtauld Gallery was founded in 1932 by Samuel Courtauld, the British industrialist and art collector. You will find it in the Strand Block of Somerset House; this well-loved gallery is certainly worth a long visit.

The gallery houses a stunning exhibition of Impressionist and Post Impressionist art from the 14th century to the present day. You can admire works by Monet, Van Gogh and Cézanne, amongst other excellent artists. Apart from paintings the gallery also displays drawings, Decorative Art, prints and sculptures.

The gallery’s collection of 14th and early 15th century Italian paintings is one of the most important in Britain. You will also find northern European art, including the Lamentation Triptych by the Master of Flemalle.

There are over 6000 drawings and watercolours and over 20,000 prints, dating back to the late Middle Ages, with fine examples of works by Leonardo de Vinci and Michelangelo. These exhibitions are rotating because the documents are fragile and you will find a selection of them in Room 12, or by appointment in the Drawing and Prints Study Room.

The collection of Decorative Art has some of the finest objects in the world, with artefacts from Europe and the Middle East. In the rooms devoted to these arts, you will find Italian Renaissance wedding chests, tin-glazed earthenware, Iznik and Spanish lusterware ceramics and beautiful Islamic metalwork by Mahmud the Kurd.

In the Gallery shop you can buy books about the gallery and its collection, with a series of very good books for children and also art-related gift items. There is also the Gallery café set in the basement or outdoors on the terrace if the weather is fine. The café serves light meals and drinks.

You are allowed to take photos in the gallery, but without a flash. Every day you can join the Lunchtime Gallery Talks, which are very interesting and educative lectures about the History of Art, painters and painting techniques.

When you spend an afternoon in Sir John Sloane’s Museum, housed in a sumptuous Georgian mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, you will ask yourself how someone with such a quirky mind could have functioned as a renowned architect and Member of the Royal Academy.

The house museum is literally stuffed from floor to ceiling with a myriad of artefacts the art-lover collected, regardless it seems, of their beauty value. On each floor of this huge house you will find yourself dazzled and amazed by paintings, sculptures, fragments of marble, models of famous buildings and the sarcophagus of the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I.

In the Picture Room you can admire priceless paintings, some of them hidden behind folding screens of rather boring looking landscapes painted by unknown artists. Behind one such landscape is Hogarth’s “The Election” and behind another, his famous “The Rake’s Progress”. These paintings were considered “unsuitable for Ladies”, which is why Sir John hid them away and only showed them to his male friends.

Another side of Sir John’s strange penchant for the bizarre is to be found in a set of rooms in the cellar, named the Monk’s Parlour. He would explain that these rooms had been set aside for the personal use of Padre Giovanni, whose grave and headstone you will find in the garden. In truth the “Padre” never existed outside Sir John’s imagination and the family dog is buried in the padre’s “grave”.

The Crypt Room is designed like Roman catacombs and is full of Roman urns, funerary busts and, of course, the sarcophagus. Sir John was also a fan of old buildings and you will see lots of puzzling marble bits and pieces that came from Greek and Roman ruins.

Apart from the haphazard collection, which isn’t without charm, the house itself is incredible: a maze of gilded mirrors, concealed skylights, hidden passages and secret niches. The ceilings too are richly decorated, with a lovely trompe l’oeil in the Breakfast Room, painted to look like a trellis covered with honeysuckle.

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum was first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building.