🇬🇧 London Weekend｜Eastern Dreams Inside Kensington’s House Museums

#londontrips Spent the weekend catching up with friends in London and exploring two evocative house museums in Kensington. This quiet district, once a haven for late 19th to early 20th-century artists, still hums with refined creative energy. — Leighton House — Originally the private home and studio of Victorian artist Frederic Leighton, Leighton House is now a museum capturing the artist’s fascination with Eastern aesthetics. • Student ticket: £9 (Leighton House only) • Joint ticket: £14 (for both houses) What makes Leighton House so striking is how it embodies Leighton’s imagined Orient. From the breathtaking Arab Hall with its gold-tiled dome to intricate wall details of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain and peacock motifs, the space blurs cultural boundaries with theatrical elegance. In Middle Eastern symbolism, peacocks often represent paradise and eternity—motifs Leighton adopts to elevate and mystify his vision of the East. This curated blend of cultures isn’t just about aesthetics. It reflects a deeper, more complex relationship with “the other”—as Edward Said explores in Orientalism, the East becomes less a place and more a source of exotic inspiration, reimagined through a Western lens.