The Wapping Project (thewappingproject.com) is a small private gallery and restaurant housed in an old hydraulic power station near the Thames. Hosting mainly large-scale site-specific pieces in its atmospheric industrial spaces, this summer it is home to Billy Cowie’s The Revery Alone — an installation featuring hospital beds and a 3-D projection on the ceiling. The adjacent restaurant offers an ambitious seasonal menu and is housed in spectacular old pump rooms, surrounded by vast pipes, hooks and chains. Set in a little patch of land behind high walls, the Wapping Project is an effortless kind of place, with bees on the roof, deck chairs on the lawn and a minifestival of radio happening in the greenhouse (a.k.a. the Invisible Picture Palace). Just beyond the gates is one of London’s oldest pubs, the 16th century Prospect of Whitby (once known as Devil’s Tavern). The pub backs onto the river and is adjacent to a gibbet erected in memory of the old execution dock. Stairs nearby will take you down to the surprisingly sandy banks of the Thames at low tide.
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