The 355|Freemasons' Hall — Art Deco Built as a War Memorial, Cast as a Palace

Crews come to Great Queen Street because Freemasons' Hall hands them a European seat of power without leaving Covent Garden. In The 355 the team walks into a formal event here, and the building supplies the scale the plot needs — the Grand Temple, the processional corridor where Khadijah is confronted, the vast entrance hall the four women cross on arrival.

None of it is a set. The hall was built between 1927 and 1933 as a memorial to the 3,225 Freemasons killed in the First World War, and it covers two and a quarter acres. The Grand Temple seats 1,700 under a mosaic ceiling; its bronze doors weigh well over a ton each and still swing on a push. The corridors are the real find — long, symmetrical, marble-lined, lit from above, and used in dozens of productions because the perspective runs on and on with nothing to break it.

The address is 60 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AZ, five minutes' walk from Holborn station. Parts of the building are open daily, and the Museum of Freemasonry is free to enter. Ask about Grand Temple tour times when you arrive rather than assuming: the room is still in regular ceremonial use, and it closes when it is being used for the thing it was built for. Sit at the back of it for five minutes with the lights up and the appeal to directors stops needing explanation.

Location photo via Wikimedia Commons.