RSA House, The Great Room

RSA House has been home to The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and its 30,000 strong fellowship since 1774 as well as some of the greatest thinkers and social activists of the past 200 years. Some notable names of past fellows you might recognise include Charles Dickens, Dame Judy Dench and Professor Stephen Hawking.

The RSA’s purpose and passion is to unite people and ideas to resolve the most pressing challenges of our time with its three current focus areas being The Future of Work, Sustainability and Education and Learning. By hosting an event at RSA House, you are directly contributing to the charity with 100% of the venue hire profits going straight back in to fund these programmes of work.

The House is situated just off the Strand and very close to Embankment Gardens and Trafalgar Square. We are very well connected with the nearest tube and mainline train stations being Charing Cross and Embankment, both less than a 5-minute walk away.

We accommodate a wide range of events at RSA House including conferences, dinners, Christmas parties, receptions, small meetings, product launches, filming, fashion shows, screenings, weddings and private dining. The House can be hired exclusively at the weekend when it is not open to the fellows or public.

The Great Room is our largest space in the building playing host to awards dinners, large conferences and meetings, drinks receptions and weddings. This iconic room is fully air conditioned, with natural daylight streaming in from the glass domed ceiling. With full AV built in, this room is ideal for most event types.

The Great Room was designed by Adam as an assembly room for the Society Members' discussions and debates and as a venue for the presentation of awards and prizes.

The Great Room is dominated by the epic series of paintings "Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture" by James Barry. In 1774, ten artists including Barry, were invited to decorate the Great Room and all declined, but Barry. 24 years later the impressive sequence of six paintings were completed to display the images we still house today.