Thurloe Place, Brompton Road, SW7 (020 7808 0900)
South Kensington tube. Open 6.30am-8pm daily. Admission
free; donations appreciated. Easily overlooked but worth stepping
inside if only to escape the roaring traffic outside, Brompton Oratory
is a monument to the late nineteenth- century English Catholic revival.
Built in 1880-4 to the designs of little-known (and unfortunately
named) architect Herbert Gribble, after an open competition, it is a
shameless attempt to imitate a florid Italian baroque church. Many of
the ornate internal decorations predate the building, including
Mazzuoli’s late seventeenth-century statues of the apostles, which
previously stood in Siena Cathedral.
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