Tate Britain

Stand for a moment at the foot of the steps. Pale Portland stone rises in front of you, and behind you the Thames slides past, brown and steady. Buses sigh along Millbank. Gulls call over the water. Above the entrance, a figure of Britannia looks down from the top of the façade, with a lion and a unicorn at her side. This is Tate Britain, and it holds five centuries of British art. It also stands on ground with a darker past than its calm columns suggest.

Before the gallery, this riverside land held a prison. Millbank Penitentiary was a huge, star-shaped building, and for decades it was one of the largest prisons in Britain. Many people sentenced to transportation passed through it before ships carried them to Australia. Some historians link the slang word "pom" to this era, but that is a popular theory rather than settled fact. What is certain is that the prison was closed and demolished in the late nineteenth century. That cleared the way for something very different.

The money for that change came from sugar. Henry Tate was a Victorian sugar refiner who made a fortune in part from the small sugar cube, a product he helped bring to British tables. He was also a serious collector of contemporary British paintings. He offered his collection to the nation, together with funds for a building to house it. The government supplied this former prison site. So, in a quiet way, every sweetened cup of tea in Victorian Britain helped pay for the rooms you are about to enter.

The gallery opened in 1897. Its first official name was the National Gallery of British Art. Most people simply called it "the Tate", after its founder, and in time the nickname became the real name. The architect was Sidney Smith, who gave it this classical front, with columns, a portico and a central dome. It was designed to feel like a temple of art. Look at the scale of the steps. They are meant to slow you down before you go in.

Here is something many visitors walk past without noticing. On parts of the outer walls, the stone carries small scars and pockmarks. These are traces of bomb damage from the Second World War, when London was under heavy air attack. The building was hit, and some of that damage was deliberately left in place. Take a moment, either now or when you leave, to run your eye along the stonework. History here is not only on the walls inside.

The river has also left its mark. In 1928, the Thames burst its banks and flooded parts of central London. Water poured into the lower floors of the gallery, where many works were stored. Paintings and drawings were damaged, and conservators spent years on repairs. It is a strange thought, looking at the calm water behind you, that it once came up into the building. Today the most fragile works are kept with that lesson in mind.

For much of the twentieth century, the Tate collected both British art and international modern art. That meant one building was trying to do two very different jobs. In 2000, the modern international collection moved downstream to a converted power station on the South Bank. That new gallery became Tate Modern. This building took a new name, Tate Britain, and a clear focus. Its subject is British art from around 1500 to the present day.

Once inside, look up. The central rotunda sits beneath the dome, and a graceful spiral staircase curls down from it to the lower level. This staircase came with a major renovation in the early 2010s, which also restored much of the original Victorian detail. The light here is soft and even, falling from above. It is a good place to pause, get your bearings and decide where to begin. Corridors lead off in several directions like the spokes of a wheel.

One of those directions leads to the great central hall known as the Duveen Galleries. This long, high space was opened in the 1930s and was designed for sculpture. Today it often hosts large commissioned installations, which change from year to year. Some visitors find a quiet, almost empty room. Others find the hall filled with something enormous and surprising. Either way, it is worth walking its full length. The proportions themselves are part of the experience.

The galleries arranged around the building follow British art roughly through time. You can walk from Tudor portraits, with their stiff lace collars and serious faces, into the age of Hogarth, Gainsborough and Constable. Later rooms bring you to the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of Victorian painters who wanted sharp detail and bright colour. Look out for John Everett Millais's "Ophelia", the drowned heroine from Shakespeare, floating among flowers. Every plant in that painting was studied from life, beside a real riverbank.

Then there is Turner. Joseph Mallord William Turner left a vast number of his paintings, sketches and watercolours to the nation. Most of this gift is shown in the Clore Gallery, a separate wing that opened in 1987. Its architect was James Stirling, and it looks nothing like the main building. Notice the coloured window frames and playful shapes. Inside, you can watch Turner's work move from careful early views to storms and sunsets dissolved into light and colour.

The gallery does not only look backwards. It is closely linked with the Turner Prize, a contemporary art award named after the painter. The prize is famous for starting arguments about what art should be. Its exhibition is often held here, though in some years it travels to other cities. So in the same afternoon, you might see a sixteenth-century portrait and a work made last year. That tension between old and new is part of the building's character.

When you step back outside, take a last look from the top of the steps. The river runs on behind you, past the place where prison walls once stood. Britannia still keeps watch above the door. Notice the people around you — students sketching, friends sitting on the steps, someone checking a map. This building was a prison, then a gift, then a temple of art. Now, for a moment, it is simply a place where you are standing in the afternoon light.