Institute of Contemporary Arts

Founded in the 1940s as a subversive antidote to the Royal Academy, the ICA opened its cinema in 1968, showing marginalised indie films at keen prices and offering worthwhile membership deals ever since. As the artistic home of a diverse stable of pioneers – Akerman, Jarman, Kiarostami, Loach – it’s a masterpiece of incongruity. Designer John Nash deployed the white stucco exterior, bon viveur Keith Allen adorned an interior wall with the Director of Exhibitions’ blood during a fabled 1970s brawl, and the ICA preserved both. The main screen holds 185 seats in a rough-plastered bunker, the second is a boxy 45-seater, focusing on the core facets of the arthouse cinema experience: comfortable seating, flawless prints and decent drinks from the bar.

• https://www.ica.art
• 020 7930 3647

• The Mall, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AH