Start Trafalgar Square

Finish exit of National Portrait Gallery

Only a small percentage of the portraits in the NPG are of women. Any many of the women who are there, are women of the upper echelons who achieved little. Relatively few of the portraits are of women who had their portraits painted because of their renown in their chosen field. But these are the women this walk concentrates on.  So if you want to see and hear about Ada Lovelace, Caroline Hershel, Mary Somerville, Mary Wolstencraft and her daughter, Elizabeth Garrett and her sister, the Pankhursts, the Brontes, Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale and many more, this is the walk for you.

This is a great walk to do in winter. But there is the option to do some of the walk outside should you not want to do the whole tour inside a museum. There’s plenty of women’s history to show you within a minute or two of the museum.