/ About

The National Portrait Gallery reopened on St Martin's Place in June 2023 after a three-year, £41m rebuild by Jamie Fobert Architects: a new Weston Wing, a reworked public forecourt, and nine redisplayed galleries carrying more than 1,100 portraits, a third more than before it closed. Exclusive hire runs across three floors of the Grade I-listed building, from the gold-lit Ondaatje Main Hall at the entrance to the salon-hung reds of Gallery 18 and the 17th and 18th Century Galleries, the navy intimacy of the Tudor rooms, and the contemporary top-lit spaces of the Weston Wing. Every wall carries a sitter (Elizabeth I in ermine, the Brontës in oil, the century's most photographed faces), so a dinner here is staged inside the collection rather than beside it.

Below ground, Larry's occupies the old Victorian vaults, a brick-arched, red-fronted bar built for cocktail receptions rather than a formal seating plan, run by Daisy Green Collection alongside Audrey Green, the ground-floor café. Up on the fourth floor, The Portrait Restaurant by Richard Corrigan, in partnership with Searcys, takes the best view in the building: a glass-walled dining room looking straight down Whitehall to the London Eye. Hire is exclusive, Monday to Thursday evenings from 6.45pm, with the whole Main Gallery bookable as a single reception across all three floors for the rare event that needs the full building.

/ Rooms Available

17th and 18th Century Galleries

Exclusive Hire
Up to 300

Nine adjoining rooms on the third floor devoted to Restoration society, hung floor to cornice with portraits from the period. Sold as a single reception space or broken into smaller adjoining rooms for a more intimate gathering, with a top-lit skylit room at its centre.

Period ArchitectureNatural Light

Ondaatje Main Hall

Exclusive Hire
Up to 300

The atrium at the Gallery's main entrance — the first space every guest walks into. A contemporary, top-lit hall with a projected portrait mural and a curved gold reception desk, built to hold branded launches, product reveals and standing receptions rather than a seated dinner.

Flexible Layout

Victorian Galleries

Exclusive Hire
Seats 120 / Up to 200

A long top-lit corridor gallery on the second floor, its walls dense with Victorian portraiture, arched doorways framing the view down its full length. Suits a long formal dinner more than any other room in the building — the table can run the corridor's length under a single sightline.

Period Architecture

Gallery 18

Exclusive Hire
Seats 120 / Up to 150

A single salon-hung room on the third floor, portraits stacked floor to ceiling against deep red walls in the Georgian manner — Exhibition Culture from 1750 to the 1850s. The Gallery's own choice for a dinner that matches the grandeur of the period, and the room most photographed for it.

Period Architecture

Larry's

Exclusive Hire
Seats 30 / Up to 150

A speakeasy bar in the Gallery's old Victorian vaults, brick-arched and gold-shelved behind a lacquered red bar front — run by Daisy Green Collection as one of two spaces they operate in the Weston Wing (alongside Audrey Green, the ground-floor café). Built for a cocktail reception rather than a formal seating plan.

Cocktail BarPeriod Architecture

The Ondaatje Wing Theatre

Exclusive Hire
Seats 150

A 138-seat lecture theatre with tiered seating and an in-house AV technician, hired subject to availability alongside a breakfast, reception or dinner elsewhere in the Gallery. The Gallery's own choice for a talk, panel or presentation ahead of an evening event.

The Portrait Restaurant

Exclusive Hire
Seats 80 / Up to 150

Richard Corrigan's restaurant on the Gallery's fourth floor, run in partnership with Searcys, with a glass-walled dining room looking straight down over Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and the London Eye. Booked directly through the restaurant's own events team rather than the Gallery's venue-hire desk.

Natural Light

20th Century Gallery

Exclusive Hire
Up to 80

A light, innovative balcony space on the second floor showing familiar faces from the 1960s to the 1990s. Suited to pre-dinner drinks, and often combined with the adjacent Victorian Galleries to run a contemporary space into a classical one across the same evening.

Contemporary Galleries

Exclusive Hire
Seats 30 / Up to 80

A newly built suite in the Weston Wing, top-lit and housing the Gallery's permanent contemporary Collection — portraits of the present day rather than the past. The most modern of the hireable rooms, and the one paired most often with a pre-dinner reception before guests move through to the older galleries.

Flexible Layout

Tudor Galleries

Exclusive Hire
Seats 40 / Up to 80

The starting point of the Collection on the third floor — the oldest portraits in the Gallery, Elizabeth I among them, against navy walls. The smallest and most intimate of the period rooms, suited to a dinner in close company with the Gallery's earliest works.

Period Architecture

/ Perfect For

CorporateCelebrationLaunchPrivate Dining

/ Features

Catering

  • – In-House Luxury Dining

Venue Specs

  • – Private Entrance
  • – Wheelchair Accessible
  • – Dedicated Events Team
  • – Cloakroom
  • – Wi-Fi

/ Getting Here

National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 7HS

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