Rediscover the City with The Royal Exchange’s historic art murals.

Explore these iconic artworks on our first-floor mezzanine.

Returning from holiday can be brutal. That is, unless you work in the greatest town in the world. London is a treasure trove of culture and history, with each corner full of fascinating things to discover: from Roman architecture to cutting-edge art. Every day can bring something new.

The Royal Exchange is no exception, and we’re proud to be a place where modernity meets tradition, where the greatest names in global luxury rub shoulders with over 450 years of history. September is Open House Month, the perfect time to rediscover your capital’s iconic buildings (though, of course, every month is open house month at The Royal Exchange!) and so we are spotlighting one of our hidden treasures: The Royal Exchange murals.

Find them on our first-floor mezzanine — free to explore all year round. You’ll find images of trade, pomp and ceremony, of royalty, splendour and history. These three below, for instance, commemorate moments in the Exchange’s long history.

From left to right: the opening of the first Royal Exchange by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571; the destruction of the second Royal Exchange in 1838; and the opening of the third incarnation by Queen Victoria on the 28th October, 1844.

Clare Willsdon, in her book Mural Painting in Britain 1840-1940: Image and Meaning, explains that these paintings were supposed “to make permanent the passing (but of course highly symbolic) show of the newly revived mayoral procession, and can be seen as sharing in the ‘invention of tradition’ in the renewal from the late nineteenth century of ancient civic ceremonials.” She writes that here, “civic ritual was being translated into what was effectively a ‘new’ medium — pictorial decoration.”

“This process, calling into play all the famed ‘enterprise’ and ‘energy’ of the Londoner, explains much of the character of the Exchange scheme as an experiment, involving mistakes as well as triumphs.”

Ultimately, Willson argues that these paintings can only be understood in the context of the Exchange — rather than merely “some kind of dusty history painting with no significance.” This is the living art of London.