When you walk along the Thames in London, especially near Westminster Bridge, you don’t just see Big Ben-you feel it. It’s not just a clock tower. It’s the heartbeat of the city, echoing through foggy mornings and golden sunsets, framed by the red double-deckers and the quiet hum of the Underground below. For over 170 years, artists have turned to Big Ben not just as a subject, but as a symbol-of resilience, of time, of London itself.
Big Ben isn’t technically the name of the tower. It’s the bell inside. The tower is the Elizabeth Tower, renamed in 2012 for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. But no one calls it that. In London, it’s Big Ben-just like people say ‘the Tube’ instead of the London Underground. This isn’t just habit. It’s identity.
Artists have always known this. From the smoky watercolours of J.M.W. Turner in the 1830s to the bold acrylics of modern street artists in Shoreditch, Big Ben has been painted in every mood imaginable. Turner’s Elizabeth Tower, London (1834) shows the tower half-swallowed by industrial fog, a ghostly silhouette against a burning sky. It wasn’t just a landscape. It was a warning-London changing, rising, burning with progress.
Fast forward to the 1950s, and you’ll find photographers like Humphrey Spender capturing Big Ben through the lens of postwar Britain. His black-and-white shots, taken during the Festival of Britain, show the tower standing tall over crowds in Trafalgar Square, children in woolly hats, and men in bowler hats holding newspapers. It wasn’t just architecture. It was continuity.
Londoners know the tower changes with the weather. In winter, it glows under streetlamps as snow dusts the Houses of Parliament. In spring, the cherry blossoms in St. James’s Park frame it in pink. Summer brings long, golden evenings when tourists line the South Bank with cameras, waiting for the chimes. Autumn? Thick mist rolls in off the Thames, and Big Ben disappears-only the sound of its bells remains.
Local artists like Sarah Finch, who runs a small studio near Vauxhall, paints Big Ben in all four seasons. Her series Time in London uses real London pigments-ochre from Kent, ultramarine mixed with Thames mud-and layers them over canvas to mimic the way light hits the tower at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in November. She doesn’t sell prints online. She sells them at the Borough Market art stall every Saturday. Locals buy them. Tourists take photos of the paintings. And sometimes, someone will say, ‘That’s exactly how it looked when I proposed to my wife here in ’09.’
Big Ben hasn’t stayed in galleries. It’s on the walls of Camden, Peckham, and Brixton. Street artists like ‘Mudlark’ have stencilled the tower in fluorescent green and gold, with the words ‘Time’s Up’ beneath it-referencing both the clock and the city’s housing crisis. In 2023, a digital projection by the Tate Modern turned Big Ben into a living canvas for a week-long event called London in Motion. Each hour, the clock face changed: one hour showed a heart beating, the next a rising tide, then a swarm of pigeons-London’s unofficial mascot.
Even fashion has taken notice. Burberry’s 2024 autumn campaign featured a model in a camel trench coat standing on Westminster Bridge, Big Ben behind her, the clock’s hands frozen at 11:59. The tagline? ‘London doesn’t stop. Neither do we.’
If you want to see Big Ben as artists have seen it, you don’t need to go far. Here’s where to look:
It’s not just its size or its sound. It’s what it represents in a city that’s always changing. Big Ben survived the Blitz. It kept ticking during the 2012 Olympics when the whole world watched. It was silent for four years during its 2017-2021 restoration, and Londoners missed it. People left candles at its base. A local musician composed a piece called Four Years Without the Chimes-played live on the South Bank in 2022.
Artists don’t paint Big Ben because it’s pretty. They paint it because it’s constant. In a city where cafés close, shops vanish, and tube lines get rerouted, Big Ben still chimes on the hour. It’s the one thing you can count on-even when the weather’s bad, the politics are messy, or you’ve just missed your train.
Next time you’re walking past it, pause. Look up. Notice how the light catches the copper roof. Listen for the faint echo of the bells through the concrete. That’s not just history. That’s London’s soul-and it’s been captured, again and again, by people who call this place home.
If you want to photograph or paint Big Ben without the tourist crowd, here’s what Londoners do:
Technically, Big Ben is the name of the 13.5-ton bell inside the Elizabeth Tower. The tower itself was called the Clock Tower until 2012, when it was renamed to honour Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. But in London, everyone still calls it Big Ben-just like they call the Underground the Tube. The name stuck because it’s simpler, and because it’s part of the city’s identity.
The most popular spot is Westminster Bridge, but it’s always crowded. For a quieter, more authentic view, head to the footpath along the Thames near Lambeth Bridge. Walk south from the London Eye, past the Tate Modern, and turn left toward the riverbank. You’ll get the tower framed by the river, with a view of the Houses of Parliament’s roofline. No ticket needed. Best at sunrise or just after sunset.
Yes. Behind St. Thomas’ Hospital, there’s a 19th-century stained-glass window by Charles Eamer Kempe that shows Big Ben with angels adjusting its hands. It’s rarely mentioned in guidebooks. Also, check the back wall of the Church of St. Margaret in Westminster-there’s a small mosaic of the tower hidden among the saints, added in the 1950s by a local craftsman.
Not really. The chimes carry about a mile under ideal conditions-usually only audible in Westminster, Southwark, and parts of Lambeth. If you’re in Camden or Croydon, you won’t hear it. But if you’re standing near the river on a quiet morning, with the wind from the west, you might catch a faint echo. That’s when you know you’re in the heart of London.
Yes. From 2017 to 2021, the bell was silenced for a major restoration. Only emergency chimes were allowed, like for Remembrance Sunday. For four years, Londoners woke up without the familiar bongs. Some people set alarms to mimic it. Others left notes at the base of the tower. When the bell rang again in 2022, a crowd gathered silently on the bridge. No one cheered. They just listened.
Big Ben isn’t just a landmark. It’s a companion. For Londoners, it’s the sound of home, the shape of history, and the silent witness to every sunrise over the Thames. Artists keep painting it because it never stops telling the story of this city-through fog, through fire, through time.
