Unauthorised Banksy exhibitions are touring the world at the moment, each promising a full survey of the best-known living street artist. The most substantial group of genuine Banksy wall paintings is not in any of them. It sits in the basement car park of the Swiss Embassy in London, where it has stayed largely out of public view for twenty-five years, and it has now been shown on Swiss state television in a documentary for RTS.
The reasons for the secrecy are fairly ordinary. An embassy is not a gallery, and security alone rules out open access. There is also a long-standing reluctance on the Swiss side to make use of the work without Banksy’s consent, and anyone who has tried to obtain a reply from Pest Control, his only known representatives, will understand why that consent has never arrived. The photographer and Shoreditch Street Art Tour guide who documented the garage in 2021 describes being allowed by the then ambassador to clear every car out so the walls could be recorded properly. He wrote an unpublished history of the place at the same time. The photographs released with this account are the first to appear in public.
The story begins with a public relations problem. In the late 1990s, revelations about Nazi gold had damaged the image of Switzerland as a prim and secretive country. A programme of events called New Generation was organised in 2001 to show that the country could connect with young people, and one of those events was a disco in the embassy garage. To set the mood, a mixed group of Swiss and British graffiti writers and street artists was hired in December 2000 to cover the underground walls. Graffiti was not yet widely accepted as a legitimate culture, which makes the commission slightly bolder than it sounds. The paintings are still intact.
By all accounts, there are about fifteen Banksy works in the garage. That includes a trio of monkeys painted on the different faces of a single pillar, and likewise two police officers on another. Break the compound images down into their parts, and you can stretch the total to thirty-five elements. Mickey Mouse has arrived at the party with a flamethrower; someone is trying to assassinate the Mona Lisa; several police officers are looking for whoever did it; and a row of monkeys with antennae on their heads waits for their turn in charge. The figures are all scorched by flames at their feet, and a caption on the ceiling names the party Disco Inferno.
Much of it is remixed, Banksy. A bulldog first painted in Manchester and at Barton Hill is paired with the poodle from the Cargo site, a spot familiar from the Shoreditch tour, so that the poodle seems to believe it is a bulldog. That piece has since been moved to an office upstairs and does not appear in the RTS film. The guard figure, also seen at Cargo, carries a truncheon here instead of a torch, and the poodle he once held on a lead has got away.
Chu, meanwhile, was among the leading British exponents of stereoscopic spraypainting at the time. The photographer joined him in the garage for what he calls a moving reunion featuring a set of striking paintings that take sound-system equipment as their subject. Only one of these has been cleared by the embassy for publicity.
RTS was given access ahead of a long refurbishment of the building, and returned in February 2026 with the production company, members of the embassy’s cultural attaché team and the photographer, who was invited for an interview. The broadcaster wisely decided the walls were more interesting than the commentary and cut his contribution. However, some of his remarks survive in an article on the RTS website and in outtakes on its Instagram page. An English version of the programme is available.
What neither the programme nor the stills can convey is the effect of standing inside it, with the paintings wrapped around you in a low concrete space. The photographs are a selection the embassy agreed to release, and the author points out that secrecy habits die hard. One Banksy mural in particular is absent from every online source. The embassy has not said why. It could be a wish to avoid revealing the layout of the basement, or it could be Banksy’s own reticence, and it is hard to tell which.
Other work remains out of sight as well. A ghoulish anamorphic portrait by Snug rises to the ceiling. Several murals by the Swiss artists are not shown, and neither are some large graffiti lettering pieces, whose authorship is disputed between different claimants.
The embassy’s decision to open the door even slightly is welcome, and the RTS film adds a good deal to what is known about Banksy’s early wall painting. Whether the garage will look the same after the refurbishment is not yet clear. For anyone who wants to see Banksy on a real wall, the Shoreditch Street Art Tour includes genuine street pieces, and its blog covers the history of the field back to its earliest days.