Question of the week: There are so many museums in London it's hard to know where to start - can you recommend one that used to be a house? "The Wallace Collection is one of the embarrassing number of free museums in London, but, tucked away in Manchester Square, it doesn't seem to get the publicity of its bigger brothers and sisters like the British Museum or the Tate Modern.
The Wallace Collection is just that, the collections of the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Sir Richard's widow, Lady Wallace, in 1897. And it is all contained, jewel-box like, in Hertford House, their former London residence.
The collection is varied - from a vast collection of arms and armour to Rococo furniture, and a little bit of everything in between. There are a number of famous paintings, among them the Laughing Cavalier by Hals and Fragonard's The Swing, but the house has retained enough of a 'house-like' feeling to give a good impression o fwhat it might have been like to live surrounded by such amazing objects."- Kris
* Photo by Su-Lin, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.
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