London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange

The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist colleges for the study of the history of art in the world and is known for the disproportionate number of directors of major museums drawn from its small body of alumni.The art collection is known particularly for its French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and is housed in the Courtauld Gallery. The Courtauld is based in Somerset House, in the Strand in London. In 2019, The Courtauld's teaching and research activities temporarily relocated to Vernon Square, London, while its Somerset House site underwent a major regeneration project.

The Hermitage Rooms was the name by which a series of rooms at Somerset House, London, were known from 2000 to 2007. During this period they were used as a venue for temporary exhibitions from the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The partnership with the Hermitage has since ended and the rooms are no longer known by this name, although they continue to house temporary exhibitions.

Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("Old Somerset House") originally belonging to the Duke of Somerset. The present Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers, begun in 1776, and was further extended with Victorian era outer wings to the east and west in 1831 and 1856 respectively. The site of Somerset House stood directly on the River Thames until the Victoria Embankment parkway was built in the late 1860s.The great Georgian era structure was built to be a grand public building housing various government and public-benefit society offices. Its present tenants are a mixture of various organisations, generally centred around the arts and education.

The Civil Service Rifles War Memorial is a First World War memorial located on the riverside terrace at Somerset House in central London, England. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1924, the memorial commemorates the 1,240 members of the Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles regiment who were killed in the First World War. They were Territorial Force reservists, drawn largely from the British Civil Service, which at that time had many staff based at Somerset House. Both battalions of the expanded Civil Service Rifles were disbanded shortly after the war; the regiment amalgamated with the Queen's Westminster Rifles, but former members established an Old Comrades Association to keep the regiment's traditions alive. The association began raising funds for a war memorial in 1920, and the Prince of Wales unveiled the memorial on 27 January 1924. It takes the form of a single rectangular column surmounted by a sculpture of an urn and flanked by painted stone flags, the Union Flag on one side and the regimental colour on the other. The base on which the column stands is inscribed with the regiment's battle honours, while an inscription on the column denotes that a scroll containing the names of the fallen was placed inside. The memorial first stood in the quadrangle of Somerset House, which the Civil Service Rifles had used as a parade ground, but the civil service began to vacate Somerset House towards the end of the 20th century. As the building and its courtyard were re-purposed, the memorial was moved to the riverside terrace in the late 1990s. Members of the regiment continued to attend Remembrance Sunday ceremonies until at least the late 1980s, by which time many former members were in their nineties; the last known surviving member of the regiment attended a rededication ceremony in 2002. The memorial was designated a grade II listed building in 1987, which was upgraded to grade II* in November 2015 when it became part of a national collection of Lutyens' war memorials.

The Dickson Poon School of Law is the law school of King's College London, itself part of the federal University of London, and serves as one of the nine schools of study within the college. It is situated on the Strand in the East Wing of Somerset House, in close proximity to the Royal Courts of Justice and the four Inns of Court in the heart of London's legal quarter. It is currently ranked in the top 15 law schools in the world, and sixth in both Europe and the UK.Following a donation of £20 million by Dickson Poon in 2012, the school was renamed in his honour. The current dean of the school is Professor Gillian Douglas.

The Tower Lifeboat Station is a lifeboat station on the River Thames in London, UK, operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). It is located at Victoria Embankment on the North Bank of the Thames, next to Waterloo Bridge. The pier takes its name from the original RNLI lifeboat station which opened in 2002 further downstream at Tower Pier, next to the Tower of London. In 2006 the lifeboat station moved to its present location at Waterloo Pier, formerly known as the Waterloo Police Pier.

The statue of George III, Somerset House, formally titled George III and the River Thames, is a Grade I listed outdoor bronze sculptural group depicting King George III and Neptune or Father Thames, located in the quadrangle of Somerset House, London, England. The sculptor was John Bacon, and the statue was erected between 1778 and 1789.George III is dressed in Roman apparel, leaning on a rudder, flanked by the prow of a Roman boat and a lion. Father Thames is reclining on a lower, semi-circular plinth, one hand on an urn with a cornucopia behind him.When Queen Charlotte first saw the statue of her husband she asked the sculptor 'Why did you make so frightful a figure?'. Bacon bowed and replied 'Art cannot always effect what is ever within the reach of Nature – the union of beauty and majesty.'

Photo London is an annual photography event held at Somerset House in London in May. Galleries and publishers show and sell work by photographers, and there are curated exhibitions and talks. Awards are also given.It was established in 2004 and ran until 2006 at the Royal Academy of Arts, then at Old Billingsgate in 2007, then stopped. It was relaunched in 2015 and has since been held at Somerset House.

The King's Building is a Grade I listed building that forms part of the Strand Campus of King's College London in the United Kingdom. Originally named the College Building, the King's Building was designed by Sir Robert Smirke in the course of the College's foundation in 1829. As the founding building, it was built between 1829 and 1831 on land granted to King's College by the Government to complete the riverside frontage of Somerset House. There are today a total of eight floors in the King's Building: Basement level, Ground level, Levels 1 to 4, Level 4U and Level 6. The King's Building houses a number of administrative departments (Estates & Facilities Offices, Admissions Office, Accommodation and Cashiers' Office), lecture theatres (most notably the Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre and Anatomy Lecture Theatre), the College Chapel, the Great Hall, various function rooms (Old Council Room, Committee Room, River Room, Somerset Room, St David's Room), study rooms and a catering outlet.

The King George III Museum was a museum within King's College London, England between 1843 and 1927 which held the collections of scientific instruments of George III as well as eminent nineteenth-century scientists including Sir Charles Wheatstone and Charles Babbage. The collection of scientific and mathematical instruments assembled by George III, after whom the museum is named, was donated to the university by Queen Victoria in 1841, and the museum was opened by Albert, Prince Consort on 1 July 1843. The museum was located within the King's Building designed by Sir Robert Smirke. It counted among its collections the unfinished prototype of the Difference Engine No. 1, designed by Charles Babbage, who is considered a "father of the computer". The museum closed in 1926, and much of its collections were transferred on loan to the Science Museum, London.

The Courtauld Gallery (UK: ) is an art museum in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London. It houses the art collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld collection was formed largely through donations and bequests and includes paintings, drawings, sculptures and other works from medieval to modern times; it is particularly known for its French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The collection contains some 530 paintings and over 26,000 drawings and prints. The head of the Courtauld Gallery is Ernst Vegelin. The gallery closed on 3 September, 2018 for a major redevelopment, called Courtauld Connects, and reopened on 19th November 2021.

The Strand Campus is the founding campus of King's College London and is located on the Strand in the City of Westminster, sharing its frontage along the River Thames. The original campus comprises the Grade I listed King's Building of 1831 designed by Sir Robert Smirke, and the college chapel, redesigned in 1864 by Sir George Gilbert Scott with the subsequent purchase of much of adjacent Surrey Street (including the Norfolk and Chesham Buildings) since the Second World War and the 1972 Strand Building. The Macadam Building of 1975 previously housed the Strand Campus Students' Union and is named after King's alumnus Sir Ivison Macadam, first President of the National Union of Students. The Strand Campus houses the arts and science faculties of King's, including the Faculties of Arts & Humanities, Law, Social Science & Public Policy and Natural & Mathematical Sciences (formerly Physical Sciences & Engineering & Computer Science). Since 2010, the campus has expanded rapidly to incorporate the East Wing of Somerset House and the Virginia Woolf Building next to LSE on Kingsway. On 10 March 2015, King's acquired a 50-year lease for the Aldwych Quarter site incorporating the historic grand Bush House building. It began occupation of the Bush House Building in September 2016 and will occupy the adjacent King House and Strand House from 2017 and Melbourne House from 2025. In October 2016, King's announced it had also taken a separate 50-year lease on the North-West Block which it will incorporate from 2018.The nearest Underground stations are Temple, Charing Cross and Covent Garden.