Every October the tents go up in The Regent's Park and a good part of the art world lands in London for five days. This year Frieze London and Frieze Masters run from 14 to 18 October, and between them they bring almost 300 galleries from 48 countries and regions into one park. I drive people to both, often on the same day, so this is the practical version: where each fair actually is, what time it opens, and where a car can and cannot go.
Two fairs, two ends of the same park
The thing that catches people out is that Frieze is not one address. Frieze London sits in the south of the park, entrance off Park Square West, postcode NW1 4LL. Frieze Masters is at the far end, on Gloucester Green in the north-east corner near London Zoo, postcode NW1 4HA. There are 172 galleries at Frieze London this year and 140 at Frieze Masters, so if you have tickets to both, and plenty of people do, you are crossing the whole park in the middle of your day.
Frieze runs a complimentary shuttle between the two entrances, roughly every fifteen minutes, so nobody is stranded. But a shuttle keeps its own timetable, and on a busy fair day that timetable is not yours. If you have a table booked in between, or you are carrying a catalogue and a coat and it has started raining, walking out to find your own car at the kerb is worth a great deal.
The hours, day by day
Wednesday 14 October is the invitation-only preview, 11am to 7pm. Thursday 15 October opens at 11am for members and invited guests, with general admission from 1pm to 5pm. Friday 16 and Saturday 17 October both run 11am to 7pm. Sunday 18 October closes an hour earlier, at 6pm.
Those times matter to the driving more than they look. Thursday is the awkward one: a four hour public window, which means everyone holding a general ticket arrives inside the same afternoon and leaves inside the same hour. Sunday is the other pinch point, because the park empties at six with everybody wanting a car at the same moment. On both of those days, the difference between a driver already waiting for you and an app you open hopefully at the gate is roughly half an hour of standing on the pavement.
Where a car can and cannot go
The Regent's Park is a royal park, not a car park. There are a limited number of pay and display spaces inside it, and during Frieze week limited means exactly what you fear. Coaches are not allowed into the park at all.
The public transport is genuinely good and I will say so plainly. Frieze London is under five minutes walk from Regent's Park tube on the Bakerloo line, with Baker Street and Great Portland Street both close by. If you are going alone, to one fair, carrying nothing, take the tube and keep your money.
Where a car earns its place is the other kind of day. Two fairs at opposite ends of the park, lunch in Marylebone, a gallery appointment in Mayfair at four, dinner after. Done on foot and underground, that day becomes a run of small defeats, most of them in the rain, and you arrive at each stop slightly less sharp than you were at the last one.
One useful thing about the address: the park sits north of Marylebone Road, which forms the top edge of the Congestion Charge zone rather than sitting inside it, so the fairs themselves are outside the zone. The moment the day takes you south into Mayfair or the West End you are in it, at £18 for the day. I have written separately about how the Congestion Charge and the ULEZ work. Either way the charges sit inside the price I quote you, so it is not a sum you need to do.
What a Frieze day looks like from the front seat
I set you down at the Park Square West entrance, and then I wait. Not circling the park burning fuel, but parked up somewhere I can have the car back at the gate within a few minutes of you messaging me. When you have finished with Frieze London I take you round the Outer Circle to the Gloucester Green side rather than putting you on the shuttle with everyone else, and the coat and the catalogues and whatever you picked up at the first fair stay in the boot instead of over your arm.
Buying something changes the shape of the afternoon too. The serious work gets shipped rather than carried out under anyone's arm, but small pieces, editions and everything off the bookstalls do come with you, and they travel a lot better in a boot than on the Circle line at half past six.
Frieze Sculpture is free, and it starts before the fairs
Frieze Sculpture opens in the English Gardens in the park on 16 September and stays up until 1 November, so it is there for nearly a month before the tents arrive and a fortnight after they come down. Eleven artists this year, curated by Fatoş Üstek, with Conrad Shawcross and Angel Otero among them. It is outdoors, it is free, and there is no ticket to book.
For anyone visiting London who is not deep in the market, it is the best hour of the whole season: no queue, no badge, no invitation required. If I am taking you across town on a quiet October afternoon, that is where I would suggest stopping for half an hour.
The week is not only the park
The fairs anchor the week, but the evenings belong to Mayfair and St James's. Frieze keeps its own space at No.9 Cork Street, two converted townhouses given over to visiting galleries through the year, and the streets around it, Cork Street, Albemarle Street, Dover Street, are the busiest I see them at any point in the calendar.
Cork Street to the park is a short run in a car and a long one on foot at the end of a day already spent standing. It is the patch I know best, and I have written about driving Mayfair and Knightsbridge if you want the detail on the hotels and the door-to-door side of it.
How I would book it
For a fair day the sensible arrangement is by the hour, which in London starts at a five hour minimum. You keep the same car and the same driver for the block, I wait while you are inside, and the day can change shape during it without a new booking or a new price.
If it is one or two of you, the S-Class is the right car. If there are four or more, or you simply want the room for coats and catalogues, the V-Class is the one I would send. The cars I drive are all in one place if you want to look first. And if you are flying in for the week, my airport transfers meet you inside the terminal at a price fixed in advance, so the front end of the trip is settled before you land.
If you have Frieze in the diary
Tell me which days you are going, which of the two fairs, and anything else in the diary that week, and I will build the driving round it and give you one price for the lot. Send me the plan and I will come back with the times.