Tate Modern

Bankside Power Station was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the red telephone box, and it burned oil until 1981. Herzog and de Meuron converted it between 1995 and 2000, keeping the brick shell and the single chimney and gutting the interior, and the decision that defines the building was to leave the Turbine Hall as an empty space thirty-five metres high running the length of the building, entered down a ramp. Since 2000 a commissioned installation has filled it each year, including Olafur Eliasson's artificial sun and Doris Salcedo's crack in the floor. The collection covers international art from 1900 onward, hung by theme rather than chronology, and the Blavatnik extension of 2016 added a viewing terrace.

What you actually see

• The Turbine Hall - a thirty-five-metre space holding one commissioned work at a time.
• The thematic hang - the collection arranged by idea rather than by date.
• The viewing level - a terrace on the 2016 extension over the river and the City.
• The power station shell - Scott's brick exterior and chimney kept intact.

When to go

Year-round; the collection is free and the building is open late on Fridays and Saturdays. Weekday mornings are quietest. School holidays and free-entry weekends fill the Turbine Hall.

Honest expectations

Temporary exhibitions are ticketed separately and often expensive. The building is large and confusingly laid out between the old and new wings. The viewing terrace overlooks flats whose residents sued over privacy, and part of it has been restricted.

Nearby

Shakespeare's Globe and Borough Market are along Bankside; St Paul's is over the Millennium Bridge.