No, Bath Assembly Rooms is not currently open to visitors. The National Trust closed the building in early 2025 to carry out a major restoration and build a new Georgian visitor experience, and it's due to reopen in 2027. There's no public access to the interior in the meantime.
If Bath Assembly Rooms was on your list, here's what happened, what's going on behind the hoardings, and what to see instead while you wait.
Why it's closed
Bath Assembly Rooms returned to full National Trust management in March 2023, after decades of being let out and run by other operators, including a long stint hosting the Fashion Museum in its basement. Once the Trust took over day-to-day running, it set out plans for a significant restoration, and the building closed to the public in early 2025 so conservation and construction work could begin.
The scale of the work is real rather than cosmetic. The Trust is replacing the floors in the Tea Room and Ball Room with new oak boards to match the originals, upgrading the windows with triple glazing while restoring the traditional Georgian look of the exterior bars, replacing the 1960s staircase with a new Georgian-inspired one, and conserving the ten original Georgian chandeliers off-site before they're rehung. Much of this is needed because the Upper Rooms lost original fabric to bomb damage during the Second World War and were patched up with less sympathetic repairs at the time.
A bit of history
John Wood the Younger designed the Assembly Rooms, and they opened in 1771 as a set of public rooms for dancing, cards and music, purpose-built for the social whirl of Georgian Bath. They were unusual for the period in being open to a broad cross-section of society rather than just the elite. The National Trust has owned the building since 1931, though it spent long periods let out to the council and other operators, most notably as the home of the Fashion Museum from the early 1960s until 2022.
When will it reopen
The National Trust is targeting 2027 for reopening, with a new Georgian visitor experience built around the restored Ball Room, Tea Room and Great Octagon. As of mid-2026, signage at the site points to a 2027 date rather than the late-2026 date the Trust had floated earlier, so treat 2027 as the current best estimate and expect it could shift again.
In April 2026 the Trust also got planning permission to redevelop the outside spaces around the building into landscaped areas, part of the same wider project, which suggests the full reopening package extends beyond just the interior rooms.
What's happening while it's closed
The Assembly Rooms isn't sitting empty. The National Trust is running a project called Reconnecting the Rooms, using National Lottery Heritage Fund support to research and share stories about the people who visited, worked in and built the Assembly Rooms, with associated events and exhibitions held at other venues around the city while the building itself is off-limits. Check the National Trust's Bath Assembly Rooms events page if you want to catch one of these while you're in the city.
What to see instead
There's plenty of Georgian Bath still open while you wait. For a look at how Bath's Georgian residents actually lived, No.1 Royal Crescent is the closest substitute for a grand Georgian interior. To understand the architecture and design thinking behind the city's best-known Georgian set pieces, our guide to the Circus and Royal Crescent covers John Wood the Elder and Younger's work in detail. And if you want art rather than architecture, the Holburne Museum at the other end of town is open as usual.
If you're specifically chasing the Fashion Museum, which used to share this building, it's a separate story: our guide to what happened to the Fashion Museum covers its own move and 2030 reopening target in the Old Post Office.