City of London Corporation Guildhall Art Gallery and London Metropolitan Archives
For over 800 years the Guildhall has been the centre of City government and the hub of City life. The Corporation of London began collecting works of art in the seventeenth century, when it commissioned portraits of the judges appointed to assess property claims in the wake of the Great Fire of London of 1666. Its collection now comprises some 6,000 paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculptures. Since the Second World War, the Corporation’s collection has concentrated on London subjects.
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the largest local authority record office in the United Kingdom. There are 78km of archives, modern records, plans, audio-visual and printed material in it’s strong-rooms - an enormous amount of information about the capital and its people. This material dates from 1067 to 2006 and is part of the History of London Collection, which is held jointly at Guildhall Library and LMA within the City of London’s Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department. It’s image collections include over 500,000 maps, prints, photographs, posters and drawings of London.
View the City of London Corporation Guildhall Art Gallery and London Metropolitan Archives collection at Heritage Images