The Barbican is launching a new atmospheric walking tour in October, uncovering tales of supernatural encounters at one of London’s most unexpected haunted sites.
The Barbican is launching a new atmospheric walking tour in October, uncovering tales of supernatural encounters at one of London’s most unexpected haunted sites. Expanding on the popularity of the Barbican Architecture Tour series, the Barbican Ghost Tours will take visitors on a journey through nearly two thousand years of history, exploring legends of Roman ruins, plague pits and staff ghost stories.
Hear accounts of mysterious voices, fleeting figures, unexplained noises and strange encounters in spaces that feel very different once the building falls silent. The 75-minute tour journeys through the highwalks and subterranean corridors of the Barbican, taking in the empty Library after opening hours, the secretive Library Stack Rooms, and the underground Pit theatre found at the Barbican Centre’s deepest point.
During the tour, visitors will experience the building in a new way, discovering strange phenomena instead of the familiar bustling activity of the Centre’s artistic events. In particular, the Library Stack Rooms where the tour concludes, and usually closed to the public, are filled with hundreds of books that date back as far as the 18th century. A space reputedly so haunted that some staff refuse to go there alone.
The tours are hosted by the Barbican’s expert tour guides, some of whom in their many years of traversing the building and recounting its history have ghostly tales of their own. The walls of the Centre may now be filled with art, music and performance, but the past has left its mark.
The Barbican Ghost Tours will run nightly from Wednesday to Sunday evenings, starting on 1 October and running until 13 December, and can be booked on the Barbican website.
