The guide

For the visitor, London is a thrilling place. Monuments from the capital’s glorious past are everywhere, from medieval banqueting halls and the great churches of Christopher Wren to eclectic Victorian architecture. You can relax in the city’s quiet Georgian squares, explore the narrow alleyways of the City of London, wander along the riverside walkways, and uncover the quirks of what is still identifiably a collection of villages. The largest capital in Europe, stretching for more than thirty miles from east to west, and with a population just short of nine million, London is also incredibly diverse, ethnically and linguistically, offering cultural and culinary delights from right across the globe.

The capital’s great historical landmarks – Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London and so on – draw in millions of tourists every year. Things change fast, though, and the regular emergence of new attractions ensures there’s plenty to do even for those who’ve visited before. With Tate Modern and the Shard, the city boasts the world’s most popular modern art museum and Western Europe’s tallest building. And the city continues to grow, its cultural, nightlife and culinary scenes pushing ever onwards into neighbourhoods once well beyond the tourist radar – into East London in particular.

You could spend days just shopping in London, mixing with the upper classes in the “tiara triangle” around Harrods, or sampling the offbeat weekend markets of Portobello Road, Brick Lane and Camden. The city’s pubs have always had heaps of atmosphere, and food is now a major attraction too, with more than fifty Michelin-starred restaurants and the widest choice of cuisines on the planet. The music, clubbing and LGBT+ scenes are second to none, and mainstream arts are no less exciting, with regular opportunities to catch outstanding theatre companies, dance troupes, exhibitions and opera.

London’s special atmosphere comes mostly, however, from the life on its streets. A cosmopolitan city since at least the seventeenth century, when it was a haven for Huguenot immigrants escaping persecution in Louis XIV’s France, today it is truly multicultural, with over half its permanent population originating from overseas. The last hundred years has seen the arrival of thousands from the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, the Mediterranean, the Far East and Eastern Europe, all of whom play an integral part in defining a metropolis that is unmatched in its sheer diversity.

Columbia Road Flower Market

Highlights

1 British Museum Quite simply one of the world’s greatest museums.

2 The Shard Feel the breeze in your hair as you take in the breathtaking views from the 72nd floor.

3 Trafalgar Square London’s huge modern art gallery is housed in a spectacularly converted power station.

4 Borough Market London’s upmarket larder, this historic market has an irresistible.

5 South Kensington’s museums A trio of superb museums, with everything from whales to rockets and Wedgwood to Raphael to pique your interest.

6 Hampstead Heath With ponds to swim in, sublime views and mile upon mile of lush heathland, Hampstead is possibly London’s loveliest green space.

7 Greenwich Picturesque riverside spot, with a weekend market, the National Maritime Museum and old Royal Observatory.

8 Hampton Court Palace Tudor interiors, architecture by Wren and vast gardens make this a great day out.

9 East End markets Best visited on a Sunday – start at Spitalfields, head towards Brick Lane and end up at Columbia Road.

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Brief history

The Romans founded Londinium in 47 AD as a stores depot on the marshy banks of the Thames. Despite frequent attacks – not least by Queen Boudica, who razed it in 61 AD – the port became secure in its position as capital of Roman Britain by the end of the century. London’s expansion really began, however, in the eleventh century, when it became the seat of the last successful invader of Britain, the Norman duke who became King William I of England (aka “the Conqueror”). Crowned in Westminster Abbey, William built the White Tower – centrepiece of the Tower of London – to establish his dominance over the merchant population, the class that was soon to make London one of Europe’s mightiest cities.

Little is left of medieval or Tudor London. Many of the finest buildings were wiped out in the course of a few days in 1666 when the Great Fire of London annihilated more than thirteen thousand houses and nearly ninety churches, completing a cycle of destruction begun the year before by the Great Plague, which killed as many as a hundred thousand people. Chief beneficiary of the blaze was Christopher Wren, who was commissioned to redesign the city and rose to the challenge with such masterpieces as St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich.

Much of the public architecture of London was built in the Georgian and Victorian periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when grand structures were raised to reflect the city’s status as the financial and administrative hub of the British Empire. And though postwar development peppered the city with some undistinguished Modernist buildings, more recent experiments in high-tech architecture, such as the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and the Shard, have given the city a new gloss.

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Westminster

Political, religious and regal power has emanated from Westminster for almost a millennium. It was Edward the Confessor (1042–66) who first established Westminster as London’s royal and ecclesiastical power base, some three miles west of the City of London. The embryonic English parliament used to meet in the abbey and eventually took over the old royal palace of Westminster. In the nineteenth century, Westminster – and Whitehall in particular – became the “heart of the Empire”, its ministries ruling over a quarter of the world’s population. Even now, though the UK’s world status has diminished, the institutions that run the country inhabit roughly the same geographical area: Westminster for the politicians, Whitehall for the civil servants.

The monuments and buildings in and around Westminster also span the millennium, and include some of London’s most famous landmarks – Nelson’s Column, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, plus two of the city’s finest permanent art collections, the National Gallery and Tate Britain. This is a well-trodden tourist circuit since it’s also one of the easiest parts of London to walk round, with all the major sights within a mere half-mile of each other, linked by one of London’s most majestic streets, Whitehall.

London orientation: where to go

Although the majority of the city’s sights are situated north of the River Thames, which loops through the centre of the city from west to east, there is no single focus of interest. That’s because London hasn’t grown through centralized planning but by a process of agglomeration. Villages and urban developments that once surrounded the core are now lost within the amorphous mass of Greater London.

Westminster, the country’s royal, political and ecclesiastical power base for centuries, was once a separate city. The grand streets and squares to the north of Westminster, from St James’s to Covent Garden, were built as residential suburbs after the Restoration in 1660, and are now the city’s shopping and entertainment zones known collectively as the West End, with Soho long the seedy heart of London after dark, now packed with restaurants, pubs and bars. To the east is the original City of London – known simply as The City – founded by the Romans, with more history than any other patch of the city, and now one of the world’s great financial centres.

East of the City, the neighbourhoods of East London draw in visitors for the markets and nightlife of Brick Lane, Spitalfields and Shoreditch, with the creative scene spreading ever outwards to places like Bethnal Green, Hackney and Dalston. In its far reaches, East London is home to the Olympic Park, and the second financial centre of Canary Wharf.

The south bank of the Thames is perfect for exploring on foot, from the London Eye, in the west, to Tate Modern and the pubs and markets of Borough beyond, with the Shard looming overhead. To the west, the museums of South Kensington are a must, as is Portobello Road market in trendy Notting Hill. Literary Hampstead and Highgate in north London are refined neighbourhoods to wander, standing either side of half-wild Hampstead Heath. To the southeast, Greenwich, downstream of central London, with its nautical associations, royal park and observatory, makes a great day out – especially if visited by boat. Finally, there are plenty of rewarding day-trips in west London along the Thames, most notably to Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle.

Trafalgar Square

Despite the persistent noise of traffic, Trafalgar Square is still one of London’s grandest architectural set pieces. John Nash designed the basic layout in the 1820s, but died long before the square took its present form. The Neoclassical National Gallery filled up the northern side of the square in 1838, followed five years later by the central focal point, Nelson’s Column, topped by the famous admiral; the very large bronze lions didn’t arrive until 1868, and the fountains didn’t take their present shape until the late 1930s.

As one of the few large public squares in London, Trafalgar Square has been both a tourist attraction and a focus for political demonstrations since the Chartists assembled here in 1848 before marching to Kennington Common. Since then, countless demos and rallies have taken place, and nowadays various free events, commemorations and celebrations are staged here.

Stranded on a traffic island to the south of the column, and predating the entire square, is an equestrian statue of Charles I, erected shortly after the Restoration on the very spot where eight of those who had signed the king’s death warrant were disembowelled. Charles’s statue also marks the original site of the thirteenth-century Charing Cross, from where all distances from the capital are measured – a Victorian imitation now stands outside Charing Cross train station.

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Trafalgar Square, WC2N 4JH • Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri 8.30am–1pm & 2–6pm, Wed 8.30am–1.15pm & 2–5pm, Sat 9.30am–6pm, Sun 3.30–5pm; concerts Mon, Tues & Fri 1pm • Free • 020 7766 1100, stmartin-in-the-fields.org • Charing Cross

The northeastern corner of Trafalgar Square is occupied by James Gibbs’s church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, fronted by a magnificent Corinthian portico. Designed in 1721, the interior is purposefully simple, though the Italian plasterwork on the barrel vaulting is exceptionally rich; it’s best appreciated while listening to one of the church’s free lunchtime concerts. There’s a licensed café in the roomy crypt, along with a shop, gallery and brass-rubbing centre.

National Gallery

Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN • Daily 10am–6pm, Fri till 9pm • Guided tours daily 11.30am & 2.30pm, plus Fri 7pm • Free • 020 7747 2885, nationalgallery.org.uk • Charing Cross

The National Gallery was begun in 1824 by the British government. The gallery’s canny acquisition policy has resulted in more than 2300 paintings, but the collection’s virtue is not so much its size as its range, depth and sheer quality. To view the collection chronologically, begin with the Sainsbury Wing, to the west. With more than one thousand paintings on display, you’ll need real stamina to see everything, so if time is tight your best bet is to home in on your areas of special interest or join one of the gallery’s free guided tours, which set off from the Sainsbury Wing foyer.

The Sainsbury Wing (1200–1500)

Predominantly filled with medieval Italian works, the Sainsbury Wing’s sixteen rooms start with fragments from Sienese artist Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece. The collection’s early masterpieces here include Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, Botticelli’s Venus and Mars (inspired by a Dante sonnet) and Piero della Francesca’s beautifully composed Baptism of Christ. Drawing the crowds is Leonardo’s melancholic Virgin of the Rocks, hung next to the exquisitely delicate Burlington House Cartoon preparatory sketch. In among the Italians, you’ll find the extraordinarily vivid Wilton Diptych, one of the few British medieval altarpieces to survive the Puritan iconoclasm of the Commonwealth, while in room 56 another standout is Jan van Eyck’s intriguing Arnolfini Portrait, which is celebrated for its complex symbolism. Finally, don’t miss the small, pristinely crisp Madonna of the Pinks (room 60), bought by the gallery for £22 million, once its attribution to Raphael had been established.

The main building (1500–1930)

The fine collection of Italian works continues into the much grander main building with large-scale paintings including Veronese’s lustrous Family of Darius before Alexander displayed in the vast Wohl Room (room 9). Beyond, Holbein’s masterful Ambassadors is hung alongside his portrait of Erasmus and works by Cranach the Elder. Numerous works by Titian on display include his early masterpiece Bacchus and Ariadne.

From Spain there are dazzling pieces by El Greco, Goya, Murillo and Velázquez, among them the provocative Rokeby Venus, while from the Dutch Golden Age, the gallery owns numerous Rembrandt paintings, including some of his most searching portraits – two of them self-portraits – and a typically serene Vermeer, as well as abundant examples of Rubens’ expansive, fleshy canvases. The gallery owns several works by Caravaggio, including Salome receives the head of John the Baptist.

There’s home-grown British art, too, represented by important works such as Hogarth’s satirical Marriage à la Mode, Gainsborough’s translucent Morning Walk, Constable’s ever-popular Hay Wain, and Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. Highlights of the French contingent include superb works by Poussin, Claude, Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau and David.

Finally, there’s a particularly strong showing of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in rooms 43–46. Among the most famous works are Manet’s unfinished Execution of Maximilian, Renoir’s Umbrellas, Monet’s Thames below Westminster, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Seurat’s pointillist Bathers at Asnières, a Rousseau junglescape and Cézanne’s proto-Cubist Bathers.

National Portrait Gallery

St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE • Daily 10am–6pm, Thurs & Fri till 9pm • Free • 020 7306 0055, npg.org.uk • Charing Cross

Around the east side of the National Gallery lurks the National Portrait Gallery, founded in 1856 to house uplifting depictions of the good and the great. Though it undoubtedly has some fine works among its collection of ten thousand portraits, many of the studies are of less interest than their subjects. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to trace who has been deemed worthy of admiration at any one time: aristocrats and artists in previous centuries, warmongers and imperialists in the early decades of the twentieth century, writers and poets in the 1930s and 1940s, and, latterly, retired footballers, and film and pop stars. The NPG’s audioguide gives useful biographical information, and the temporary exhibitions, including the annual portrait award, are often worth catching.

Whitehall

Whitehall, the unusually broad avenue connecting Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square, is synonymous with the faceless, pinstriped bureaucracy charged with the day-to-day running of the country, who inhabit the governmental ministries which line the street. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, Whitehall was the permanent residence of the kings and queens of England.

The statues dotted about recall the days when Whitehall stood at the centre of an empire on which the sun never set. Halfway down, in the middle of the road, stands Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph, a memorial to the war dead, erected after World War I and the centrepiece of the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in November. Close by are the gates of Downing Street, home to London’s most famous address, Number 10 Downing Street, the seventeenth-century terraced house that has been the official residence of the prime minister since it was presented to Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first PM, by George II in 1732.

Banqueting House

Whitehall, SW1A 2ER • Daily 10am–5pm but frequent early closures so ring or check website before visiting; last entry 4.30pm • £6.50 • 020 3166 6154, hrp.org.uk • Charing Cross

Whitehall Palace was originally the London seat of the Archbishop of York, confiscated and greatly extended by Henry VIII after a fire at Westminster forced him to find alternative accommodation. The chief section of the old palace to survive the 1698 fire was the Banqueting House begun by Inigo Jones in 1619 and the first Palladian building to be built in England. The one room open to the public has no original furnishings, but features superlative Rubens ceiling paintings glorifying the Stuart dynasty, commissioned by Charles I in the 1630s. Charles himself walked through the room for the last time in 1649 when he stepped onto the executioner’s scaffold from one of its windows.

Horse Guards and the Household Cavalry Museum

Whitehall, SW1A 2AX • Daily: April–Oct 10am–6pm (part-day closures through May & June); Nov–March 10am–5pm • £7 • 020 7930 3070, householdcavalrymuseum.co.uk • Charing Cross or Westminster

Two mounted sentries of the Queen’s Household Cavalry and two horseless colleagues are posted to protect Horse Guards, originally the main gateway to St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace. Round the back of the building, you’ll find the Household Cavalry Museum where you can learn about the regiments’ history. With the stables immediately adjacent, it’s a sweet-smelling place, and – horse-lovers will be pleased to know – you can see the beasts in their stalls through a glass screen. Don’t miss the pocket riot act on display, which ends with the wise warning: “must read correctly: variance fatal”.

Changing the Guard

The Queen is Colonel-in-Chief of the seven Household Regiments: the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals are the two Household Cavalry regiments; while the Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards make up the Foot Guards.

Changing the Guard takes place at two London locations: the Foot Guards march with a band to Buckingham Palace (May–July daily 11.30am; Aug–April alternate days; no ceremony if it rains; royal.gov.uk) – they’re best sighted coming down the Mall around 11.15am. The Household Cavalry have a ceremony at Horse Guards on Whitehall (Mon–Sat 11am, Sun 10am, with an elaborate inspection at 4pm), and they don’t care if it rains or shines. A ceremony also takes place regularly at Windsor Castle.

Churchill War Rooms

King Charles St, SW1A 2AQ • Daily 9.30am–6pm; June–Aug till 7pm • £19 • 020 7416 5000, iwm.org.uk • Westminster

In 1938, in anticipation of Nazi air raids, the basements of the civil service buildings on the south side of King Charles Street, south of Downing Street, were converted into the Cabinet War Rooms. It was here that Winston Churchill directed operations and held Cabinet meetings for the duration of World War II, and the rooms have been left pretty much as they were when they were finally abandoned on VJ Day 1945, making for an atmospheric underground trot through wartime London. Also in the basement is the excellent Churchill Museum, where you can hear snippets of Churchill’s most famous speeches and check out his trademark bowler, spotted bow tie and half-chewed Havana, not to mention his wonderful burgundy zip-up “romper suit”.

Houses of Parliament

Parliament Square, SW1A 0AA • 020 7219 4114, parliament.uk • Westminster

Perhaps London’s best-known monument is the Palace of Westminster, better known as the Houses of Parliament, thanks to its instantly recognizable, ornate, gilded clocktower popularly known as Big Ben, after the thirteen-tonne main bell that strikes the hour. Such is its national status that the news that the bongs would be silenced for four years during essential repairs to the tower brought howls of protest from traditionalist MPs (repairs are due to be completed in 2021, though it will still ring out at New Year and for other major occasions). The original medieval palace burned down in 1834, and everything you see now – save for Westminster Hall – is the work of Charles Barry, who created an orgy of honey-coloured pinnacles, turrets and tracery that attempts to express national greatness through the use of Gothic and Elizabethan styles. It’s undoubtedly the city’s finest Victorian Gothic Revival building, and the Victorian love of mock-Gothic detail is as apparent throughout the interior, where the fittings were largely the responsibility of Barry’s assistant, Augustus Pugin. Tours start with the eleventh-century Westminster Hall, with its huge oak hammer-beam roof: one of the most magnificent secular medieval halls in Europe.

Information and tours: Houses of Parliament

Tours Saturday year-round, plus Mon–Fri during parliamentary recess (usually 9.20am–4.30pm; 1hr 15min self-guided audio tours £18.50 advance/£20.50 on the day; 1hr 30min guided tours £25.50 advance/£28 on the day; 020 7219 4114; parliament.uk/visiting). Advance booking is recommended and cheaper, or buy tickets on the day from the ticket office at the front of Portcullis House, on Victoria Embankment. UK residents are entitled to a free guided tour of the palace, which needs to be organized through your local MP’s office.

Public galleries To watch proceedings in either the House of Commons – the livelier of the two – or the House of Lords, join the queue for the public galleries at the Cromwell Green visitor entrance during sitting times. For a full schedule of debates phone 020 7219 4272, or visit parliament.uk. For the House of Commons, regular sitting times are Mon 2.30–10.30pm, Tues & Wed 11.30am–7.30pm, Thurs 9.30am–5.30pm and occasionally Fri 9.30am–3pm.

Question Time UK citizens can attend Prime Minister’s Question Time (Wed noon–12.30pm) – when the House of Commons is at its liveliest – and ministerial Question Times (Mon 2.30pm, Tues 11.30am, Thurs 9.30am); book in advance with your MP’s office, though members of the public will be let in if there’s space.

Westminster Abbey

Parliament Square, SW1P 3PA • Abbey Mon–Sat 9.30am–4.30pm, Wed until 7pm, last admission on any day 1hr before closing • £20 in advance or £22 on the day, including audioguide • Verger tours Mon–Sat times vary • £5 • Great Cloisters Daily 9.30am–4.30pm College Garden Tues–Thurs: April–Sept 10am–6pm; Oct–March 10am–4pm • Entry to cloisters and garden included in cost of ticket to abbey but free on Sundays when entry is via Dean’s Yard • 020 7222 5152, westminster-abbey.org • Westminster

The Houses of Parliament dwarf their much older neighbour, Westminster Abbey, yet this single building embodies much of the history of England: it has been the venue for all coronations since the time of William the Conqueror, and the site of more or less every royal burial for some five hundred years between the reigns of Henry III and George II. Scores of the nation’s most famous citizens are honoured here, too, and the interior is crammed with hundreds of monuments and statues.

Entry is via the north transept, which is cluttered with monuments to politicians and traditionally known as Statesmen’s Aisle, beyond which is the main nave: narrow, light and, at over 100ft in height, one of the tallest in the country. The most famous monument in this section is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, near the west door. Passing through the choir, you reach the central sanctuary, site of the coronations, and the wonderful Cosmati floor mosaic, constructed in the thirteenth century by Italian craftsmen.

Henry VII’s Chapel and Shrine of Edward the Confessor

The abbey’s most dazzling architectural set piece, the Lady Chapel, is better known as Henry VII’s Chapel, after the Tudor monarch who added it in 1503 as his future resting place. With its intricately carved vaulting and fan-shaped gilded pendants, the chapel represents the last spectacular gasp of English Perpendicular Gothic.

As you leave Henry VII’s Chapel, look out for Edward I’s Coronation Chair, a decrepit oak throne dating from around 1300 and used in every coronation since 1308. Behind the high altar, the Shrine of Edward the Confessor is the sacred heart of the building, now only accessible on a guided tour.

Poets’ Corner

Nowadays, the abbey’s royal tombs are upstaged by Poets’ Corner, in the south transept, though the first occupant, Geoffrey Chaucer, was in fact buried here not because he was a poet, but because he lived nearby. By the eighteenth century this zone had become an artistic pantheon; those buried here include Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, while there are memorials to Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and William Blake.

Great Cloisters

Doors in the south choir aisle (plus a separate entrance from Dean’s Yard) lead to the Great Cloisters. On the east side lies the octagonal Chapter House, where the House of Commons met from 1257, boasting thirteenth-century apocalyptic wall paintings. Also worth a look is the museum, filled with generations of royal funereal effigies.

Tate Britain

Millbank, SW1P 4RG • Daily 10am–6pm; usually first Fri of month until 10pm • Free; charge for some temporary exhibitions (around £16–18) • 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk • Pimlico

A purpose-built gallery half a mile south of Parliament, founded in 1897 with money from sugar baron Henry Tate, Tate Britain is devoted to British art. The collection covers 1500 to the present, and the gallery also puts on large-scale temporary exhibitions that showcase British artists.

The pictures are largely hung chronologically, so you begin with the richly bejewelled portraits of the Elizabethan nobility, before moving on to Britain’s most famous artists – Hogarth, Constable, Gainsborough, Reynolds – plus foreign-born artists like Van Dyck who spent much of their career in Britain. The ever-popular Pre-Raphaelites are always well represented, as are established twentieth-century greats such as Stanley Spencer and Francis Bacon alongside living artists such as David Hockney and Bridget Riley. Lastly, don’t miss the Tate’s outstanding Turner collection, displayed in the Turner Wing, and the room dedicated to William Blake on its upper floor.

Westminster Cathedral

Victoria St, SW1P 1LT • Cathedral Mon–Fri 7am–7pm, Sat 8am–7pm, Sun 8am–8pm • Free • Tower Mon–Fri 9.30am–5pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am–6pm • £6 • 020 7798 9055, westminstercathedral.org.uk • Victoria

Begun in 1895, the stripy neo-Byzantine concoction of the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral was one of the last and wildest monuments to the Victorian era. It’s constructed from more than twelve million terracotta-coloured bricks, decorated with hoops of Portland stone – “blood and bandages” style, as it’s known – and culminates in a magnificent tapered tower which rises to 274ft, served by a lift. The interior is only half finished, so to get an idea of what the place will look like when it’s finally completed, explore the series of side chapels whose rich, multicoloured decor makes use of more than one hundred different marbles from around the world.

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St James’s

St James’s, the exclusive little enclave sandwiched between St James’s Park and Piccadilly, was laid out in the 1670s close to St James’s Palace. Regal and aristocratic residences overlook Green Park, gentlemen’s clubs cluster along Pall Mall and St James’s Street, while jacket-and-tie restaurants and expense-account gentlemen’s outfitters line Jermyn Street, giving the area an air of exclusivity that’s rare in London. Open to all, though, is St James’s Park, with large numbers heading for the Queen’s chief residence, Buckingham Palace, and the adjacent Queen’s Gallery and Royal Mews.

The Mall

Laid out as a memorial to Queen Victoria, the tree-lined sweep of The Mall is at its best on Sundays, when it’s closed to traffic. The bombastic Admiralty Arch was erected to mark the entrance at the Trafalgar Square end of The Mall, while at the Buckingham Palace end stands the ludicrous Victoria Memorial, Edward VII’s overblown 2300-ton marble tribute to his mother, which is topped by a gilded statue of Victory. Four outlying allegorical groups in bronze confidently proclaim the great achievements of her reign.

St James’s Park

SW1A 2BJ • Daily 5am–midnight • Free • 0300 061 2350, royalparks.org.uk

Flanking nearly the whole length of the Mall, St James’s Park is the oldest of the royal parks, having been drained and enclosed for hunting purposes by Henry VIII. It was landscaped by Nash in the 1820s, and today its lake is a favourite picnic spot. Pelicans – originally a gift from the Russians to Charles II – can still be seen at the eastern end of the lake, and there are exotic ducks, swans and geese aplenty.

Buckingham Palace

The Mall, SW1A 1AA • Late July to late Aug 9.30am–7.30pm, last admission 5.15pm; Sept 9.30am–6.30pm, last admission 4.15pm • State Rooms: £23, including garden highlights: £32.50 • 030 3123 7300, royalcollection.org.uk • Green Park or Victoria

The graceless colossus of Buckingham Palace has served as the monarch’s permanent London residence only since the accession of Victoria. Bought by George III in 1762, the building was overhauled in the late 1820s by Nash and again in 1913, producing a palace that’s as bland as it’s possible to be.

For a few months a year, the hallowed portals are grudgingly nudged open. The interior, however, is a bit of an anti-climax: of the palace’s 750 rooms you’re permitted to see twenty or so, and there’s little sign of life, as the Queen decamps to Scotland every summer. For the rest of the year the only draw is to watch Changing the Guard, in which a detachment of the Queen’s Foot Guards marches to appropriate martial music from St James’s Palace and Wellington Barracks to the palace forecourt (unless it rains, that is).

Queen’s Gallery

Buckingham Palace Rd, SW1A 1AA • Daily: Aug & Sept 9.30am–5.30pm; Oct–July 10am–5.30pm • £11 • 030 3123 7301, royalcollection.org.uk • Victoria

A Doric portico on the south side of Buckingham Palace forms the entrance to the Queen’s Gallery, which puts on temporary exhibitions drawn from the Royal Collection, a superlative array of art that includes works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Holbein, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt and Canaletto, as well as the world’s largest collection of Leonardo drawings, the odd Fabergé egg and heaps of Sèvres china.

Top 5 quirky museums

Dennis Severs’ House Spitalfields.

Horniman Museum Forest Hill.

Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret Borough.

Sir John Soane’s Museum Holborn.

Wellcome Collection Euston.

Royal Mews

Buckingham Palace Rd, SW1W 1QH • April–Oct daily 10am–5pm; Feb, March & Nov Mon–Sat 10am–4pm • £10; combined ticket with Queen’s Gallery £19 • 030 3123 7302, royalcollection.org.uk • Victoria

Royal carriages are the main attraction at the Nash-built Royal Mews, in particular the Gold State Coach, made for George III in 1762 and used in every coronation since. It’s smothered in 22-carat gilding and weighs four tonnes, its axles supporting four life-size figures.

St James’s Palace

Marlborough Rd, SW1A 1BS • Chapel Royal Oct–Good Friday services Sun 8.30am & 11.15am Queen’s Chapel Easter Sun–July services Sun 8.30am & 11.15am • Green Park

St James’s Palace’s main red-brick gate-tower is pretty much all that remains of the Tudor palace erected here by Henry VIII. When Whitehall Palace burned down in 1698, St James’s became the principal royal residence and, in keeping with tradition, every ambassador to the UK is still accredited to the “Court of St James’s”, even though the court has since moved down the road to Buckingham Palace. The modest, rambling, crenellated complex is off limits to the public, with the exception of the Chapel Royal, situated within the palace, and the Queen’s Chapel, on the other side of Marlborough Road; both are open for services only.

Clarence House

The Mall, SW1 1BA • Aug Mon–Fri 10am–4.30pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5.30pm, last admission 1hr before closing; visits (by guided tour) must be booked in advance • £10 • 020 7766 7303, royalcollection.org.uk • Green Park

Clarence House, connected to the palace’s southwest wing, was home to the Queen Mother, and now serves as the official London home of Charles and his second wife, Camilla, but a handful of rooms can be visited over the summer when the royals are in Scotland. The interior is pretty unremarkable, so apart from a peek behind the scenes in a working royal palace, or a few mementos of the Queen Mum, the main draw is the twentieth-century British paintings on display by the likes of Walter Sickert and Augustus John.

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Mayfair

Piccadilly, which forms the southern border of swanky Mayfair, may not be the fashionable promenade it started out as in the eighteenth century, but a whiff of exclusivity still pervades Bond Street and its tributaries, where designer clothes emporia jostle for space with jewellers, bespoke tailors and fine art dealers. Regent Street and Oxford Street, meanwhile, are home to the flagship branches of the country’s most popular chain stores.

Regent Street

Regent Street, drawn up by John Nash in 1812 as both a luxury shopping street and a triumphal way between George IV’s Carlton House and Regent’s Park, was the city’s earliest attempt at dealing with traffic congestion, slum clearance and planned social segregation, something that would later be perfected by the Victorians. The increase in the purchasing power of the city’s middle classes in the last century brought the tone of the street “down” and heavyweight stores now predominate. Among the best known are Hamley’s, reputedly the world’s largest toyshop, and Liberty, the upmarket department store that popularized Arts and Crafts designs.

Oxford Street: the busiest street in Europe

As wealthy Londoners began to move out of the City in the eighteenth century in favour of the newly developed West End, so Oxford Street – the old Roman road to Oxford – gradually became London’s main shopping thoroughfare. Today, despite successive recessions and sky-high rents, Oxford Street remains Europe’s busiest street, simply because this two-mile hotchpotch of shops is home to (often several) flagship branches of Britain’s major retailers. The street’s only real architectural landmark is Selfridges, which opened in 1909 and has a facade featuring the Queen of Time riding the ship of commerce and supporting an Art Deco clock.

Piccadilly

Piccadilly apparently got its name from the ruffs or “pickadills” worn by the dandies who used to promenade here in the late seventeenth century. It’s not much of a place for promenading today, however, with traffic nose to tail most of the day and night. Infinitely more pleasant places to window-shop are the various nineteenth-century arcades that shoot off to the north and south, grandest of which is the Burlington Arcade, built to protect shoppers from the mud and horse dung on the streets, but now equally useful for escaping exhaust fumes.

Royal Academy of Arts

Piccadilly, W1J 0BD • Daily 10am–6pm, Fri till 10pm • Special exhibitions from £12 • Regular guided tours of building (check online) • 020 7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk • Green Park

The Royal Academy of Arts occupies one of the few surviving aristocratic mansions that once lined the north side of Piccadilly. Rebuilding in the nineteenth century destroyed the original curved colonnades beyond the main gateway, but the complex has kept the feel of a Palladian palazzo. The country’s first-ever formal art school, founded in 1768, the RA hosts a wide range of art exhibitions, and an annual Summer Exhibition whereby anyone can enter paintings in any style, and the lucky winners get hung, in rather close proximity, and are for sale. RA “Academicians” are allowed to display six of their own works – no matter how awful. The result is a bewildering display, which gets panned annually by highbrow critics, but enjoyed happily by everyone else. Other temporary exhibitions range from Rubens to Ai Weiwei, while the Collections Gallery in the rear building – connected by a David Chipperfield-designed concrete bridge and opening in 2018 – displays highlights from the Royal Academy’s eclectic permanent collection, including Michelangelo’s marble relief, the Taddei Tondo.

Bond Street

Bond Street, which runs parallel with Regent Street and is lined with designer shops, art galleries and auction houses, carefully maintains its exclusivity. It is, in fact, two streets rolled into one: the southern half, laid out in the 1680s, is known as Old Bond Street; its northern extension, which followed less than fifty years later, is known as New Bond Street. They are both pretty unassuming streets architecturally, yet the shops that line them are among the flashiest in London, dominated by perfumeries, jewellers and designer clothing stores. In addition to fashion, Bond Street is also renowned for its fine art galleries and its auction houses, the oldest of which is Sotheby’s, 34–35 New Bond St, whose viewing galleries are open free of charge.

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Marylebone

Marylebone, which lies to the north of Oxford Street, is, like Mayfair, another grid-plan Georgian development. Marylebone High Street retains a leisurely, village-like ambience, and has some good independent shops. The area boasts a very fine art gallery, the Wallace Collection, and, in its northern fringes, one of London’s biggest tourist attractions, Madame Tussauds, plus the ever-popular Sherlock Holmes Museum.

Wallace Collection

Manchester Square, W1U 3BN • Daily 10am–5pm • Free • Free guided tours daily 2.30pm, Sat & Sun also 11.30am • 020 7563 9500, wallacecollection.org • Bond Street

Housed in a well-preserved, eighteenth-century manor, incongruously situated not far from the hubbub of Oxford Street, the splendid Wallace Collection is best known for its eighteenth-century French paintings, Franz Hals’ Laughing Cavalier, Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda, Velázquez’s Lady with a Fan and Rembrandt’s affectionate portrait of his teenage son, Titus. It was bequeathed to the nation in 1897 by the widow of Richard Wallace, an art collector and the illegitimate son of the fourth Marquess of Hertford, and the museum has preserved the feel of a grand stately home, its exhibits piled high in glass cabinets, and paintings covering almost every inch of wall space. The fact that these exhibits are set amid priceless Boulle furniture – and a bloody great armoury – makes the place even more remarkable.

Madame Tussauds

Marylebone Rd, NW1 5LR • Times vary, but generally: Sept–June Mon–Fri 9am–4pm, Sat & Sun 9am–5pm; July, Aug & peak times daily 8.30am–6pm • Advance booking online £29/on the day £35 • madametussauds.com • Baker Street

Madame Tussauds has been pulling in the crowds ever since the good lady arrived in London from Paris in 1802 bearing the sculpted heads of guillotined aristocrats. The entrance fee might be extortionate and the waxwork likenesses of the famous occasionally dubious, but you can still rely on finding London’s biggest queues here (book online to avoid waiting). Inside, they change exhibits regularly, but one of the more original experiences is the Spirit of London, an irreverent five-minute romp through the history of London in a miniaturized taxicab.

Sherlock Holmes Museum

239 Baker St, NW1 6XE • Daily 9.30am–6pm • £15 • 020 7224 3688, sherlock-holmes.co.uk • Baker Street

Baker Street is synonymous with Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective who lived at no. 221b (the number on the door of the museum, though it’s actually at no. 239). Unashamedly touristy, the Sherlock Holmes Museum is stuffed full of Victoriana and life-size models of characters from the books. It’s an atmospheric and competent exercise in period reconstruction, though it won’t take you long to see everything.

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Soho

Bounded by Regent Street to the west, Oxford Street to the north and Charing Cross Road to the east, Soho is very much the heart of the West End. It was the city’s premier red-light district for centuries and, even as major developments encroach, it retains an unorthodox and slightly raffish air that’s unique in central London. It has an immigrant history as rich as that of the East End and a louche nightlife that has attracted writers, musicians and revellers of every sexual persuasion since the eighteenth century. Conventional sights are few, yet, away from the big tourist junctions of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, there’s probably more interesting street life here than anywhere in the city centre, whatever the hour. Today it’s London’s most high-profile LGBT+ quarter, especially around Old Compton Street, with Greek, Frith and Dean streets, which cut across it, home to a mix of old-style Soho venues, such as Ronnie Scott’s on Frith Street – London’s longest running jazz club – cellar bars and some good restaurants. At the north end is Soho Square, the area’s main green space. Dividing Soho in two is busy Wardour Street, with nearby Berwick Street known for its street market, record and fabric stores. At the western end, near Regent Street, you’ll find Carnaby Street, made famous as the place to buy your miniskirts in the swinging 1960s, when Mary Quant had a shop here. Nowadays, it has a decent mix of chain stores, while you can find some more interesting one-off boutiques and places to eat just off it along Foubert’s Place and Newburgh Street and in Kingly Court.

Piccadilly Circus

Anonymous and congested, Piccadilly Circus is a much-altered product of Nash’s grand 1812 Regent Street plan and now a major traffic interchange. It may not be a picturesque place, but thanks to its celebrated aluminium statue, popularly known as Eros, it’s prime tourist territory. The fountain’s archer is one of the city’s top attractions, a status that baffles all who live here. Despite the bow and arrow, the figure is not the god of love at all but his lesser-known brother, Anteros, god of requited love, commemorating the selfless philanthropic love of the Earl of Shaftesbury, a Bible-thumping social reformer who campaigned against child labour.

Leicester Square

When the big cinemas and nightclubs are doing good business, and the buskers are entertaining the crowds, Leicester Square is one of the most crowded places in London, particularly on a Friday or Saturday when huge numbers of tourists and half the youth of the suburbs seem to congregate here. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that the square actually began to emerge as an entertainment zone; cinema moved in during the 1930s, a golden age evoked by the sleek black lines of the Odeon on the east side.

Chinatown

Chinatown, hemmed in between Leicester Square and Shaftesbury Avenue, is a self-contained jumble of shops, cafés and restaurants. Only a minority of London’s Chinese live in these three small blocks, but it remains a focus for the community, a place to do business or the weekly shop, celebrate a wedding, or just meet up for meals, particularly on Sundays, when the restaurants overflow with Chinese families tucking into dim sum. Gerrard Street is the main drag, where you’ll see telephone kiosks rigged out as pagodas and fake Chinese gates or paifang.

Old Compton Street

If Soho has a main road, it would be Old Compton Street, which runs parallel with Shaftesbury Avenue. The shops, boutiques and cafés here are typical of the area and a good barometer of the latest fads. Soho has been a permanent fixture on the LGBT+ scene for the better part of a century, and you’ll find a profusion of gay bars, clubs and cafés jostling for position here and at the junction with Wardour Street.

Photographers’ Gallery

16–18 Ramillies St, W1F 7LW • Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Thurs till 8pm, Sun 11–6pm • £4, free before noon • 020 7087 9300, thephotographersgallery.org.uk • Oxford Circus

Established in 1971, the Photographers’ Gallery was the first independent gallery devoted to photography in London, and is now the city’s largest public photographic gallery. This former warehouse hosts three floors of exhibitions that change regularly and are invariably worth a visit, as are the bookshop and café. There’s also a camera obscura in the third-floor studio (open when the studio isn’t in use).

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Covent Garden and Strand

More sanitized and commercial than neighbouring Soho, the shops and restaurants of Covent Garden today are a far cry from the district’s heyday when the piazza was the great playground (and red-light district) of eighteenth-century London. The buskers in front of St Paul’s Church, the theatres round about, and the Royal Opera House on Bow Street are survivors of this tradition, and on a balmy summer evening, Covent Garden Piazza is still an undeniably lively place to be, while the streets to the north, around Neal Street, and the Seven Dials junction, including Monmouth Street and the tucked-away Neal’s Yard, are better for browsing and people-watching. On the area’s southern edge, the Strand, a busy thoroughfare connecting Westminster to the City, was once famous for its riverside mansions, though only Somerset House, on the north side of Waterloo Bridge, remains.

Covent Garden Piazza

London’s oldest planned square, laid out in the 1630s by Inigo Jones, Covent Garden Piazza was initially a great success, its novelty value alone attracting a rich and aristocratic clientele, but over the next century the tone of the place fell as the fruit and vegetable market expanded, and theatres, coffee houses and brothels began to take over the peripheral buildings. When the market closed in 1974, the piazza narrowly survived being turned into an office development. Instead, the elegant Victorian market hall and its environs were restored to house shops, restaurants and arts-and-crafts stalls. Of Jones’s original piazza, the only remaining parts are the two rebuilt sections of north-side arcading, and St Paul’s Church, to the west.

London Transport Museum

Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 7BB • Daily 10am–6pm, Fri opens 11am • Adults £17.50, under-16s free; tickets are valid for unlimited entries for a year • 020 7379 6344, ltmuseum.co.uk • Covent Garden

A former flower-market shed on Covent Garden Piazza’s east side is home to the London Transport Museum, a sure-fire hit for families. To follow the displays chronologically, head for Level 2, where you’ll find a reconstructed 1829 Shillibeer’s Horse Omnibus, which provided the city’s first regular horse-bus service. Level 1 tells the story of the world’s first underground system and contains a lovely 1920s Metropolitan Line carriage in burgundy and green with pretty, drooping lamps. On the ground floor, one double-decker tram is all that’s left to pay tribute to the world’s largest tram system, dismantled in 1952. Look out, too, for the first tube train, from the 1890s, whose lack of windows earned it the nickname “the padded cell”.

Royal Opera House

Bow St, WC2E 9DD • Backstage tours (booked in advance): usually Mon–Sat 10.30am, 12.30pm & 2.30pm • 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk • Covent Garden

The arcading on the northeast side of the piazza was rebuilt as part of the redevelopment of the Royal Opera House, whose main Neoclassical facade dates from 1811 and opens onto Bow Street. The adjoining Victorian wrought-iron-and-glass structure is the Floral Hall, once home to Covent Garden’s flower market and now the Paul Hamlyn Hall, a spectacular setting for the theatre’s champagne bar (open 1hr 30min before performances). Some areas of the Opera House are closed for limited periods for refurbishment, which, once complete, will create more public spaces looking out onto the piazza and Bow Street.

Somerset House

The Strand, WC2R 1LA • Fountain Court Daily 7.30am–11pm • Free Riverside terrace Daily 8am–11pm • Free • Guided tours Thurs 1.15pm & 2.45pm, Sat 12.15pm, 1.15pm, 2.15pm & 3.15pm • Free • Embankment Galleries Mon, Tues, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm, Wed–Fri 11am–8pm • £6 East and West Wing Galleries Daily 10am–6pm during exhibitions • Usually free • 020 7845 4600, somersethouse.org.uk • Temple or Covent Garden

Somerset House is the sole survivor of the grandiose river palaces that once lined the Strand. Although it looks like an old aristocratic mansion, the present building was purpose-built in 1776 to house government offices. Nowadays, Somerset House’s granite-paved courtyard, which has a 55-jet fountain that spouts little syncopated dances straight from the cobbles, is used for open-air performances, concerts, installations and, in winter, an ice rink.

The interior is a network of corridors and exhibition spaces, also housing half a dozen cafés and restaurants. The south wing has a lovely riverside terrace with a café/restaurant and the Embankment Galleries, which host special exhibitions on contemporary art and design. You can also admire the Royal Naval Commissioners’ superb gilded eighteenth-century barge in the King’s Barge House, below ground level in the south wing.

Courtauld Gallery

Somerset House, The Strand, WC2R 1LA • Daily 10am–6pm, last entry 5.30pm, Thurs occasionally open until 9pm • £8, more during temporary exhibitions • 020 7848 2526, courtauld.ac.uk • Temple or Covent Garden

In the north wing of Somerset House is the Courtauld Gallery, chiefly known for its dazzling collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Among the most celebrated is a small-scale version of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Renoir’s La Loge, and Degas’ Two Dancers, plus a whole heap of Cézanne’s canvases, including one of his series of Card Players. The Courtauld also boasts a fine selection of works by the likes of Rubens, Van Dyck, Tiepolo and Cranach the Elder, as well as top-notch twentieth-century paintings and sculptures by, among others, Kandinksy and Matisse.

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Bloomsbury and King’s Cross

Bloomsbury was built over in grid-plan style from the 1660s onwards, and the formal bourgeois Georgian squares laid out then remain the area’s main distinguishing feature. In the twentieth century, Bloomsbury acquired a reputation as the city’s most learned quarter, dominated by the dual institutions of the British Museum and London University, but perhaps best known for its literary inhabitants, among them T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Today, the British Museum is clearly the star attraction, but there are other minor sights, such as the Charles Dickens Museum. Only in its northern fringes does the character of the area change dramatically, as you near the hustle and bustle of Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross train stations, beyond which one section of the Regent’s Canal is the focus for an imaginatively designed new quarter that has adapted former industrial structures – gasholders and warehouses – into galleries, parks and luxury apartments.

From top Greenwich Park; Little Venice

British Museum

Great Russell St, WC1B 3DG • Daily 10am–5.30pm, Fri till 8.30pm • Free; special exhibitions £12–17; audioguides £6 • Eye-opener tours Numerous each day, ask at information desks; 30–40min • Free • Highlights tour Fri–Sun 11.30am & 2pm; 1hr 30min • £12 • 020 7323 8181, britishmuseum.org • Tottenham Court Road, Russell Square or Holborn

The British Museum is one of the great museums of the world. With more than seventy thousand exhibits ranged over several miles of galleries, it boasts a huge collection of antiquities, prints and drawings. Its assortment of Roman and Greek art is unparalleled, its Egyptian collection is the most significant outside Egypt, and there are fabulous treasures from Anglo-Saxon and Roman Britain, and from China, Japan, India and Mesopotamia.

The building itself, begun in 1823, is the grandest of London’s Greek Revival edifices, dominated by the giant Ionian colonnade and portico that forms the main entrance. At the heart of the museum is the Great Court, with its remarkable, curving glass-and-steel roof, designed by Norman Foster. At the centre stands the copper-domed former Round Reading Room, built in the 1850s to house the British Library, where Karl Marx penned Das Kapital (unfortunately currently closed to the public).

The museum is vast, immensely popular and, on first visit, overwhelming, so it’s worth focusing on one or two sections. There are information desks in the Great Court, where you can get audioguides and find out about tours: the Eye-opener tours, which concentrate on just one or two rooms, are particularly recommended.

The collections

To get a sense of the origins of the collection, start at the ground-floor Enlightenment gallery (room 1). Originally the King’s Library, this imposing 300ft Neoclassical room was built to house George III’s library (now at the British Library), and looks like a very large cabinet of curiosities, full of unusual items that formed the nucleus of the collection.

The most famous of the Roman and Greek antiquities are the Parthenon sculptures, better known as the Elgin Marbles, after the British aristocrat who acquired the reliefs in 1801. There’s a splendid series of Assyrian reliefs, depicting events such as the royal lion hunts of Ashurbanipal, in which the king slaughters one of the cats with his bare hands. The Egyptian collection of monumental sculptures is impressive, with the ground-floor centrepiece the Rosetta Stone, which finally unlocked the secret of Egyptian hieroglyphs. On the first floor, it’s the remarkable collection of mummies that draws the biggest crowds.

The leathery half-corpse of the 2000-year-old Lindow Man, discovered in a Cheshire bog, and the Anglo-Saxon treasure from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, are among the highlights of the prehistoric and Romano-British section. The medieval and modern collections, meanwhile, include the exquisite twelfth-century Lewis chessmen, carved from walrus ivory.

Further rooms cover European Renaissance treasures, Mexico and North America, plus Africa, Islamic art, Japan, Korea and China – including a remarkable collection of Chinese porcelain. There are also changing exhibits from the museum’s large collection of prints and drawings, and rooms devoted to money and clocks.

Charles Dickens Museum

48 Doughty St, WC1N 2LX • Tues–Sun 10am–5pm, last admission 4pm • £9 • 020 7405 2127, dickensmuseum.com • Russell Square

Charles Dickens moved to Doughty Street in 1837, shortly after his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, and they lived here for two years, during which time he wrote Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. Much of the house’s furniture belonged, at one time or another, to Dickens. Also on display are numerous portraits, including the earliest known portrait of the writer (a miniature painted by his aunt in 1830), and original, heavily annotated manuscripts. The museum puts on special exhibitions, and you’ll also find a café here.

Wellcome Collection

183 Euston Rd, NW1 2BE • Tues–Sat 10am–6pm, Thurs till 10pm, Sun 11am–6pm • Free • 020 7611 2222, wellcomecollection.org • Euston or Euston Square

The Wellcome Collection is the foundation established by American-born pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). It puts on thought-provoking scientifically themed exhibitions, and has various permanent displays, the one unmissable one being Medicine Man, which showcases the weird and wonderful collection of historical and scientific artefacts amassed by Henry Wellcome. These range from Florence Nightingale’s moccasins to a mummified human body from the Chima people of Peru (1200–1400). Don’t leave without taking a look at the top-floor reading room – a fantastically quirky library and gallery, where you could happily spend a few hours perusing the exhibits. A café, bookshop and restaurant are all on site.

British Library

96 Euston Rd, NW1 2DB • Building Mon–Thurs 9.30am–8pm, Fri 9.30am–6pm, Sat 9.30am–5pm, Sun 11am–5pm; Treasures Gallery closes 6pm on Mon • Free; charge for some special exhibitions • 0330 333 1144 or 020 7412 7332, bl.uk • King’s Cross

As one of the country’s most expensive public buildings, the British Library took flak from all sides during its protracted construction, and finally opened in 1998. Yet while it’s true that the building’s uncompromising red-brick edifice is resolutely unfashionable, the library’s interior has met with general approval, and the exhibition galleries are superb. At its centre, a huge multistorey glass-walled tower houses the vast King’s Library, collected by George III.

With the exception of the reading rooms, the library is open to the public and puts on a wide variety of exhibitions and events, and has several cafés, a restaurant and free wi-fi. In the Treasures Gallery is a selection of the BL’s ancient manuscripts, maps, documents and precious books, including the richly illustrated Lindisfarne Gospels and the Magna Carta, along with changing displays of early literary editions and manuscripts.

King’s Cross and St Pancras stations

Euston Rd, N1C 4QP • King’s Cross St Pancras

The area around King’s Cross and St Pancras stations is always buzzing with buses, cars, commuters, tourists and, with the massive development behind, construction workers. Architecturally, the area is dominated by St Pancras Station, the most glorious of London’s red-brick Victorian edifices, with the neo-Gothic former Midland Grand Hotel designed by George Gilbert Scott, now the St Pancras Renaissance, forming its facade. It overshadows neighbouring King’s Cross Station, opened in 1852, a mere shed in comparison, albeit one that has been beautifully restored. It is, of course, the station from which Harry Potter and his wizarding chums leave for school aboard the Hogwarts Express from platform 9¾. The film scenes were shot between platforms 4 and 5, and a station trolley is now embedded in the new concourse wall, providing a perfect photo opportunity for Potter fans (expect to queue), next to a Harry Potter-themed shop.

Granary Square and the canal

Granary Square, N1C 4AA • King’s Cross Visitor Centre Stable St • Mon–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 10am–4pm • 020 3479 1795, kingscross.co.uk • Camley Street Natural Park 12 Camley St, N1C 4PW • Daily: April–Sept 10am–5pm; Oct–March 10am–4pm • Free • 020 7833 2311, wildlondon.org.uk • King’s Cross St Pancras

From King’s Cross station, walk north up King’s Boulevard and you reach the Regent’s Canal and the district that once serviced the industries dependent on the canal and railways. The relocation of Eurostar to St Pancras kick-started redevelopment here, which is now well underway, transforming 67 acres into a new city quarter. It will ultimately include twenty new streets and ten new public squares, with around twenty venerable former industrial structures, mostly designed by Lewis Cubitt, surviving. Beyond the canal is the centrepiece Granary Square, a large open space almost entirely taken over by a grid of playful dancing fountains that are irresistible to children on hot days. The former Granary building itself is home to Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts.

To find out more about the development, visit King’s Cross Visitor Centre to the side of the Granary building, which has a model of the development and from where you can take a guided tour (1hr 30min; free; book online). Largely car-free, with plenty of green spaces and frequent pop-up markets and events, the whole area is fun to explore. Walk along the canal, past the picturesque St Pancras Lock, and you reach a cluster of brooding Victorian gasholders, one framing a landscaped park with mirrored pergola, Gasholder Park. On the other side of the canal, connected by a pedestrian bridge, is Camley Street Natural Park, which was transformed into a wildlife haven of woodland sand ponds in the 1980s.

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Holborn

Holborn, on the periphery of the financial district of the City, has long been associated with the law, and its Inns of Court make for an interesting stroll, their archaic, cobbled precincts exuding the rarefied atmosphere of an Oxbridge college, and sheltering one of the city’s oldest churches, the twelfth-century Temple Church. Holborn’s gem, though, is the Sir John Soane’s Museum, one of the most memorable and enjoyable of London’s small museums, packed with architectural illusions and an eclectic array of curios.

Temple

Temple is the largest and most complex of the Inns of Court, where every barrister in England must study (and eat) before being called to the Bar. A few very old buildings survive here and the maze of courtyards and passageways are still redolent of Dickens’s London, as described in Bleak House.

Middle Temple Hall

Middle Temple Lane, EC4Y 9AT • Hall Mon–Fri 10am–noon & 3–4pm, though sometimes closed for events • Free • Gardens May–July & Sept Mon–Fri noon–3pm • 020 7427 4800, middletemplehall.org.uk • Temple or Blackfriars

Medieval students ate, attended lectures and slept in the Middle Temple Hall, still the Inn’s main dining room. The present building, constructed in the 1560s, provided the setting for many great Elizabethan masques and plays – probably including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which is believed to have been premiered here in 1602. The hall is worth a visit for its fine hammer-beam roof, wooden panelling and decorative Elizabethan screen.

Temple Church

Temple, EC4Y 7HL • Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri 10am–4pm, Wed usually term time 2–4pm & summer 10am–4pm, but times and days vary; check online • £5 • 020 7353 3470, templechurch.com • Temple or Blackfriars

The complex’s oldest building is Temple Church, built in 1185 by the Knights Templar, and modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The interior features striking Purbeck marble piers, recumbent marble effigies of medieval knights and tortured grotesques grimacing in the spandrels of the blind arcading. The church makes an appearance in both the book and the film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

Sir John Soane’s Museum

12–14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP • Tues–Sat 10am–5pm, candlelit eve first Tues of month 6–9pm (very popular, so you may have to queue) • Free • Guided tours (including the private apartment) Tues & Sat 11am & noon, Thurs & Fri noon; book ahead • £10 • Private apartment tours Tues–Sat 1.15pm & 2pm; no advance booking, sign up ahead of time on the day • Free • 020 7405 2107, soane.org • Holborn

A trio of buildings on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields houses the fascinating Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane (1753–1837), a bricklayer’s son who rose to be architect of the Bank of England, was an avid collector who designed this house not only as a home and office, but also as a place to show his large collection of art and antiquities. Arranged much as it was in his lifetime, the ingeniously planned house – with mirrors, domes and skylights creating space and light as if out of nowhere – reveals surprises in every alcove. Standouts among the thousands of objects and artworks are the Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti and Hogarth’s mercilessly satirical series Election and The Rake’s Progress (in the picture room, the latter hung hidden behind the former; the room guides will show you). To get a real sense of the man and architect who created this curious place, take one of the private apartment tours of the upper floor.

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The City

Stretching from Temple Bar in the west to the Tower of London in the east, The City is where London began. It was here, nearly two thousand years ago, that the Romans first established a settlement on the Thames; later the medieval City emerged as the country’s most important trading centre and it remains one of the world’s leading financial hubs. However, in this Square Mile (as the City is sometimes referred to), you’ll find few leftovers of London’s early days, since four-fifths burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. Rebuilt in brick and stone, the City gradually lost its centrality as London swelled westwards. What you see now is mostly the product of three fairly recent building phases: the Victorian construction boom; the postwar reconstruction following World War II; and the building frenzy that began in the 1980s and has continued ever since, most recently adding a cluster of dizzingly high skyscrapers.

When you consider what has happened here, it’s amazing that anything has survived to pay witness to the City’s 2000-year history. Wren’s spires still punctuate the skyline and his masterpiece, St Paul’s Cathedral, remains one of London’s geographical pivots. At the City’s eastern edge, the Tower of London still boasts some of the best-preserved medieval fortifications in Europe. Other relics, such as Wren’s Monument to the Great Fire and London’s oldest synagogue and church, are less conspicuous, and even locals have problems finding modern attractions like the Museum of London and the Barbican arts complex.

Top 5 city churches

The City of London is crowded with churches (london-city-churches.org.uk), the majority of them built or rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire. Weekday lunchtimes are a good time to visit, when many put on free concerts of classical and chamber music; others have branched out and host cafés during the week.

St Bartholomew-the-Great Cloth Fair; greatstbarts.com; Barbican. The oldest surviving pre-Fire church, established in 1123, in the City and by far the most atmospheric, with a Norman chancel. Mon–Fri 8.30am–5pm, Sat 10.30am–4pm, Sun 8.30am–8pm; mid-Nov to mid-Feb Mon–Fri closes 4pm; £5.

St Mary Abchurch Abchurch Lane; Cannon Street or Bank. Unique among Wren’s City churches for its huge, painted, domed ceiling, plus the only authenticated reredos by Grinling Gibbons. Mon–Fri 11am–3pm.

St Mary Aldermary Bow Lane/Watling Street; Mansion House. Wren’s most successful stab at Gothic, with fan vaulting in the aisles and a panelled ceiling in the nave. Mon–Fri 9am–4.30pm.

St Mary Woolnoth Lombard St; Bank. Hawksmoor’s only City church, sporting an unusually broad, bulky tower and a Baroque clerestory that floods the church with light from its semicircular windows. Mon–Fri 7.30am–5.15pm.

St Stephen Walbrook Walbrook; Bank. Wren’s dress rehearsal for St Paul’s, with a wonderful central dome and plenty of original woodcarving. Mon, Tues & Thurs 10am–4pm, Wed 11am–3pm, Fri 10am–3.30pm.

St Paul’s Cathedral

St Paul’s Churchyard, EC4M 8AD • Cathedral Mon–Sat 8.30am–4.30pm, last admission 4pm; galleries Mon–Sat 9.30am–4.15pm • £18; £16 online • 020 7236 4128, stpauls.co.uk • St Paul’s

Designed by Christopher Wren and completed in 1710, St Paul’s Cathedral remains a dominating presence in the City, despite the encroaching tower blocks. Topped by an enormous lead-covered dome, its showpiece west facade is particularly magnificent.

The best place from which to appreciate St Paul’s is beneath the dome, decorated (against Wren’s wishes) with Thornhill’s trompe-l’oeil frescoes. The most richly decorated section of the cathedral, however, is the chancel, where the gilded mosaics of birds, fish, animals and greenery, dating from the 1890s, are spectacular. The intricately carved oak and limewood choir stalls, and the imposing organ case, are the work of Wren’s master carver, Grinling Gibbons.

The galleries

A series of stairs, beginning in the south aisle, lead to the dome’s three galleries, the first of which is the internal Whispering Gallery, so called because of its acoustic properties – words whispered to the wall on one side are distinctly audible over 100ft away on the other, though the place is often so busy you can’t hear much above the hubbub. The other two galleries are exterior, with suitably breathtaking views: the wide Stone Gallery, around the balustrade at the base of the dome, and, ultimately, the tiny Golden Gallery, below the golden ball and cross which top the cathedral.

The crypt

Although the nave is crammed full of overblown monuments to military types, burials in St Paul’s are confined to the whitewashed crypt, reputedly the largest in Europe. Immediately to your right is Artists’ Corner, which boasts as many painters and architects as Westminster Abbey has poets, including Christopher Wren himself, who was commissioned to build the cathedral after its Gothic predecessor, Old St Paul’s, was destroyed in the Great Fire. The crypt’s two other star tombs are those of Nelson and Wellington, both occupying centre stage and both with even more fanciful monuments upstairs.

Museum of London

150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN • Daily 10am–6pm • Free • 020 7001 9844, museumoflondon.org.uk • Barbican or St Paul’s

Over the centuries, numerous Roman, Saxon and medieval remains have been salvaged or dug up and are now displayed in the Museum of London, whose permanent galleries provide an educational and imaginative trot through London’s past, from prehistory to the present day. Specific exhibits to look out for include the Bucklersbury Roman mosaic, marble busts from the Temple of Mithras (uncovered in the City) and the model of Old St Paul’s, but the prize possession is the Lord Mayor’s Coach, built in 1757 and rivalling the Queen’s in sheer weight of gold decoration. Look out, too, for the museum’s excellent temporary exhibitions, gallery tours, lectures and walks.

Guildhall

Gresham St, EC2V 5AE • Great Hall May–Sept daily 10am–4.30pm; Oct–April Mon–Sat 10am–4.30pm; gallery Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–4pm • Free • 020 7332 1313, cityoflondon.gov.uk • Bank

Despite being the seat of the City governance for over 800 years, Guildhall doesn’t exactly exude municipal wealth. Nevertheless, it’s worth popping inside the Great Hall, which miraculously survived both the Great Fire and Blitz. The hall is still used for functions, though only the walls survive from the original fifteenth-century building, which was the venue for several high-treason trials, including that of Lady Jane Grey. The purpose-built Guildhall Art Gallery contains one or two exceptional works, most notably Rossetti’s La Ghirlandata. In the basement, you can view the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, dating from around 120 AD, which was discovered when the gallery was built in 1988.

Bank

Bank is the finest architectural arena in the City. Heart of the finance sector and the busy meeting point of eight streets, it’s overlooked by a handsome collection of Neoclassical buildings – among them, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange (now a shopping mall) and Mansion House (the Lord Mayor’s official residence) – each one faced in Portland stone.

Bank of England

Threadneedle St, EC2R 8AH • Mon–Fri 10am–5pm • Free • 020 7601 5545, bankofengland.co.uk • Bank

Established in 1694 by William III to raise funds for the war against France, the Bank of England wasn’t erected on its present site until 1734. All that remains of the building on which Sir John Soane spent the best part of his career from 1788 onwards is the windowless, outer curtain wall. However, you can view a reconstruction of Soane’s Bank Stock Office, with its characteristic domed skylight, see a virtual tour of the bank, and touch a real gold bar, in the museum, which has its entrance on Bartholomew Lane.

Bevis Marks Synagogue

Bevis Marks, EC3A 7LH • Mon, Wed & Thurs 10.30am–2pm, Tues & Fri 10.30am–1pm, Sun 10.30am–12.30pm; guided tours Wed & Fri 11.30am, Sun 11am • £5; tours free • 020 7626 1274, sephardi.org.uk/bevis-marks • Aldgate

Hidden away behind a red-brick office block in a little courtyard is the Bevis Marks Synagogue. Built in 1701 by Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, this is the country’s oldest surviving synagogue, and its roomy, rich interior gives an idea of just how wealthy the community was at the time. Nowadays, the Sephardic community has dispersed across London and the congregation has dwindled, though the magnificent array of chandeliers makes it popular for candlelit Jewish weddings.

The Monument

Fish St Hill, EC3R 8AH • April–Sept daily 9.30am–6pm; Oct–March 9.30am–5.30pm • £5; joint ticket with Tower Bridge £12 • 020 7403 3761, themonument.org.uk • Monument

The Monument was designed by Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. Crowned with spiky gilded flames, this plain Doric column stands 202ft high; if it were laid out flat it would touch the bakery where the Fire started, east of Monument. The bas-relief on the base, now in very bad shape, depicts Charles II and the Duke of York in Roman garb conducting the emergency relief operation. Views from the gallery, accessed by 311 steps, are somewhat dwarfed nowadays by the buildings springing up around it.

London Bridge

Until 1750, London Bridge was the only bridge across the Thames. The medieval bridge achieved world fame: built of stone and crowded with timber-framed houses, a palace and a chapel, it became one of the great attractions of London – there’s a model in the nearby church of St Magnus the Martyr (Tues–Fri 10am–4pm). The houses were finally removed in the mid-eighteenth century, and a new stone bridge, erected in 1831, lasted until the 1960s; that one was bought by an American industrialist and now stands reconstructed in the Arizona desert. It was transported there to be the focus of a new settlement, where it remains, now a curious centrepiece in a sprawling desert town. The present concrete structure dates from 1972.

Aiming high: city skyscrapers

Throughout the 1990s, most people’s favourite modern building in the City was Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building, on Leadenhall Street – a vertical version of his Pompidou Centre in Paris – an inside-out array of glass and steel piping. Lloyd’s was upstaged in 2003 by Norman Foster’s 590ft-high glass diamond-clad Gherkin, which endeared itself to Londoners with its cheeky shape. In recent years, the City skyline has sprouted yet more skyscrapers, with the Cheesegrater (officially the Leadenhall Building), Richard Rogers’ 737ft wedge-shaped office block, opposite the Lloyd’s Building, and the Scalpel, a 620ft angular shard of glass, clustering near the Gherkin. Set away from this tight grouping and so more controversial is Rafael Viñoly’s ugly, unsympathetic 525ft Walkie Talkie, on Fenchurch Street, which features a public Sky Garden on the top floor (20 Fenchurch St, EC3M 8AF; Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat & Sun 11am–9pm; book free tickets in advance; 020 7337 2344, skygarden.london), and several restaurants and bars.

More are planned, with the vast block of the 219ft 22 Bishopsgate currently under construction and, tallest of all, 1 Undershaft, planned for completion in the 2020s, which will be the tallest construction in the Square Mile, at 951ft. It’ll remain second tallest in London (and Europe) to Renzo Piano’s 1016ft Shard, by London Bridge.

Tower of London

EC3N 4AB • Mon & Sun 10am–5.30pm, Tues–Sat 9am–5.30pm; Nov–Feb closes 4.30pm; last admission 30min before closing; 1hr guided tours every 30min • £28; £24.80 online in advance; tours free • 0844 482 7799, hrp.org.uk • Tower Hill

One of Britain’s main tourist attractions, the Tower of London overlooks the river at the eastern boundary of the old city walls. Despite all the hype, it remains one of London’s most remarkable buildings, site of some of the goriest events in the nation’s history, and somewhere all visitors and Londoners should explore at least once. Chiefly famous as a place of imprisonment and death, it has variously been used as a royal residence, armoury, mint, menagerie, observatory and – a function it still serves – a safe-deposit box for the Crown Jewels.

The lively free guided tours given by the Tower’s Beefeaters (officially known as Yeoman Warders) are useful for getting your bearings. Visitors enter the Tower by the Middle Tower and the Byward Tower, in the southwest corner, but in times gone by most prisoners were delivered through Traitors’ Gate, on the waterfront. Immediately, they would have come to the Bloody Tower, which forms the main entrance to the Inner Ward, and which is where the 12-year-old Edward V and his 10-year-old brother were accommodated “for their own safety” in 1483 by their uncle, the future Richard III, and later murdered. It’s also where Walter Raleigh was imprisoned on three separate occasions, including a thirteen-year stretch.

Tower Green and the White Tower

At the centre of the Inner Ward is village-like Tower Green, where, over the years, seven highly placed but unlucky individuals have been beheaded, among them Anne Boleyn and her cousin Catherine Howard (Henry VIII’s second and fifth wives). The White Tower, which overlooks the Green, is the original “Tower”, begun in 1078, and now home to displays from the Royal Armouries. Even if you’ve no interest in military paraphernalia, you should at least pay a visit to the Chapel of St John, a beautiful Norman structure on the second floor that was completed in 1080 – making it the oldest intact church building in London.

Crown Jewels

The Waterloo Barracks, to the north of the White Tower, hold the Crown Jewels; queues can be painfully long, however, and you only get to view the rocks from moving walkways. The vast majority of exhibits post-date the Commonwealth (1649–60), when many of the royal riches were melted down for coinage or sold off. Among the jewels are some of the largest cut diamonds in the world, plus the legendary Koh-i-Noor, which was set into the Queen Mother’s Crown in 1937.

Tower Bridge

SE1 2UP • Daily: April–Sept 10am–5.30pm; Oct–March 9.30am–5pm • £9.80; joint ticket with Monument £12 • 020 7403 3761, towerbridge.org.uk • Tower Hill

Tower Bridge ranks with Big Ben as the most famous of all London landmarks. Completed in 1894, its neo-Gothic towers are clad in Cornish granite and Portland stone, but conceal a steel frame, which, at the time, represented a considerable engineering achievement, allowing a road crossing that could be raised to give tall ships access to the upper reaches of the Thames. The raising of the bascules remains an impressive sight (check the website for times). If you buy a ticket, you get to walk across the elevated walkways that link the summits of the towers, and which have glass-floor sections, and visit the Tower’s Victorian Engine Rooms, on the south side of the bridge, where you can see the now defunct giant coal-fired boilers which drove the hydraulic system until 1976, and play some interactive engineering games.

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East London

Few places in London have engendered so many myths as the East End, an area long synonymous with slums, sweatshops and crime, its dark mythology surrounding the likes of Jack the Ripper and the Kray twins. It was also the first port of call for wave after wave of immigrants, including the French Huguenots, Jewish eastern Europeans and those from the Indian subcontinent. Now, however, visitors arriving here are most likely to be those in search of the next London scene. Art previews, experimental cocktail bars and edgy nightlife all find a space in the sprawl of neighbourhoods – Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Dalston, Hackney – that make up the wider East London.

For day-time visitors, Sunday morning is the best time to visit for the network of famous Sunday markets – clothes and crafts in Spitalfields, hip vintage gear around Brick Lane and flowers on Columbia Road – while further afield the Olympic Park has some fun spots for families.

Spitalfields

Spitalfields, within sight of the sleek tower blocks of the financial sector, lies at the old heart of the East End, where the French Huguenots settled in the seventeenth century, where the Jewish community was at its strongest in the late nineteenth century, and where today’s Bengali community eats, sleeps, works and prays. If you visit just one area in the East End, it should be this, which preserves mementos from each wave of immigration. The focal point of the area is Spitalfields Market, the red-brick and green-gabled market hall built in 1893; the west end has been extensively remodelled and holds glass-fronted chain stores and restaurants, but the original facades survive on the northern and eastern sides. Within, you can find a daily changing mix of crafts, arts and food stalls.

Dennis Severs’ House

18 Folgate St, E1 6BX • Mon noon–2pm (last admission 1.15pm), Sun noon–4pm (last admission 3.15pm); Mon, Wed & Fri “Silent Night” visits 5–9pm • £10; “Silent Night” visits £15 • 020 7247 4013, dennissevershouse.co.uk • Shoreditch High Street or Liverpool Street

You can visit one of Spitalfields’ characteristic eighteenth-century terraced houses at 18 Folgate St, where the American artist Dennis Severs lived until 1999. Eschewing all modern conveniences, Severs lived under candlelight, decorating his house as it would have been two hundred years ago. The public were invited to share in the experience that he described as like “passing through a frame into a painting”. Today visitors are free to explore the cluttered, candlelit rooms, which resonate with the distinct impression that the resident Huguenot family has just popped out, not least due to the smell of cooked food and the sound of horses’ hooves on the cobbles outside.

The evolution of East London

Since the 1990s, the northern fringe of the City has been colonized by artists, designers and architects. This has evolved into a distinctive look, scene and attitude found across East London – think vintage markets, revamped old pubs, speakeasy-style bars, hipster coffee shops and street art. You’ll find a swathe of neighbourhoods where cheap Turkish, Bangladeshi or Vietnamese restaurants, plus the occasional traditional East End café (such as E. Pellicci in Bethnal Green), sit alongside high-end boutique hotels, art galleries and street fashion stores. Hoxton (to the north of Old Street) and Shoreditch (to the south) kicked off the East End transformation, but they have since been upstaged by Dalston (up Kingsland Road) and Hackney beyond. To get a taste of the area try these East London favourites:

An East London top 5

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club

Columbia Road Flower Market

Culpeper

E. Pellicci

First Thursdays at Whitechapel Gallery

Brick Lane

Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, E1 6QL • Various markets Sat 11am–6pm, Sun 10am–5pm • trumanbrewery.com • Aldgate East, Shoreditch High Street, Liverpool Street

Brick Lane gets its name from the brick kilns situated here after the Great Fire to help rebuild the City. By 1900, this was the high street of London’s unofficial Jewish ghetto, but from the 1960s, Brick Lane became the heart of the Bangladeshi community; latterly it has gentrified into a mix of hip vintage shops and music venues, intermingled with the Bangladeshi curry houses. The Sunday flea market (8am–3pm) occupies the northern stretch of the road, while craft, vintage and food markets fill every corner of the Old Truman Brewery complex, halfway up Brick Lane, at weekends.

Whitechapel Gallery

77–82 Whitechapel High St, E1 7QX • Tues–Sun 11am–6pm, Thurs until 9pm • Free • 020 7522 7888, whitechapel.org • Aldgate East

Near the south end of Brick Lane, the Whitechapel Art Gallery is housed in its original beautiful, crenellated 1899 Arts and Crafts building by Charles Harrison Townsend, its facade embellished with a smattering of gilded leaves by the sculptor Rachel Whiteread, and an extension into a former library next door. Founded by one of the East End’s many Victorian philanthropists, Samuel Barnett, the gallery has an illustrious history of showing innovative exhibitions of contemporary art. There’s also a great bookshop, reading room and café-bar. Its First Thursdays initiative is a perfect way to soak up the East London buzz: on the first Thursday of every month, some 150 East London galleries, small and large, stay open till 9pm.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

The focus of the 2012 Olympics was the Olympic Park, laid out over a series of islands formed by the River Lee and various tributaries and canals. Since the Olympics, it has been renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the whole area has been replanted with patches of grass, trees and flowers, with waterways meandering through it, and it’s peppered with cafés, making it a great new park in which to hang out on a sunny day (queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk; Stratford). The centrepiece is the Olympic Stadium, now home to West Ham United football club and UK Athletics; it also serves as a major events venue. Standing close to the stadium is the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower (daily: April–Sept 10am–6pm; Oct–March 10am–5pm, sometimes later during peak periods; tower £11.50, tower and slide £16.50; book online in advance; arcelormittalorbit.com), a 377ft-high continuous loop of red recycled steel designed by Anish Kapoor, with the world’s longest tunnel slide spiralling down it. But the most eye-catching venue is Zaha Hadid’s wave-like Aquatics Centre, where a swim costs under £5. To the north of the site, you can try out track, BMX and mountain biking at the Velodrome (visitleevalley.org.uk).

V&A Museum of Childhood

Cambridge Heath Rd, E2 9PA • Daily 10am–5.45pm • Free • 020 8983 5200, vam.ac. uk/moc • Bethnal Green

The wrought-iron hall that houses the V&A Museum of Childhood was originally part of the V&A in South Kensington and was transported here in the 1860s to bring art to the East End. On the ground floor you’ll see clockwork toys – everything from classic robots to a fully functioning model railway – marionettes and puppets, teddies and Smurfs, and even Inuit dolls. The most famous exhibits are the remarkable antique dolls’ houses dating back to 1673, displayed upstairs, where you’ll also find a play area for very small kids, and the museum’s special exhibitions.

Docklands

Built in the nineteenth century to cope with the huge volume of goods shipped along the Thames from all over the Empire, Docklands was once the largest enclosed cargo-dock system in the world. When the docks closed in the 1960s the area was generally regarded as having died forever, but regeneration in the 1980s brought luxury flats and, on the Isle of Dogs, a huge high-rise office development. Here, at Canary Wharf, César Pelli’s landmark stainless steel tower One Canada Square remains an icon on the city’s eastern skyline. The excellent Museum of London Docklands (daily 10am–6pm; free; museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands), in an old warehouse in Canary Wharf, charts the history of the area from Roman times to the present day.

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The South Bank

Drawing in huge numbers of visitors for its high-profile tourist attractions, including the enormously popular London Eye, the South Bank forms a waterside cluster of London’s finest cultural institutions, while further south is the impressive Imperial War Museum. With most of London’s major sights sitting on the north bank, the views from here are the best on the river, and, thanks to the wide, traffic-free riverside boulevard, the area can be happily explored on foot, while for much of the year outdoor festivals take place along the riverbank.

Southbank Centre

Belvedere Rd, SE1 8X • Foyers daily 10am–11pm; occasional closures for events • 020 3879 9555, southbankcentre.co.uk • Waterloo

In 1951, the South Bank Exhibition, on derelict land south of the Thames, formed the centrepiece of the national Festival of Britain, an attempt to revive postwar morale by celebrating the centenary of the Great Exhibition. The site’s most striking features were the saucer-shaped Dome of Discovery (inspiration for the Millennium Dome), the Royal Festival Hall (which still stands) and the cigar-shaped steel-and-aluminium Skylon tower (yet to be revived).

The Festival of Britain’s success provided the impetus for the creation of the Southbank Centre, home to a string of venerable artistic institutions: the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall concert venues; the Hayward Gallery, known for its large temporary exhibitions of modern art; the BFI Southbank arts cinema, and the National Theatre. Its uncompromising concrete brutalism is softened by its riverside location, its avenue of trees, its buskers and skateboarders, the weekend food stalls behind the RFH, and the busy secondhand bookstalls outside the BFI. In summer, the roof garden tucked away above the Queen Elizabeth Hall is a delightful spot, while there are often free events and live music in the Festival Hall’s main public spaces, plus seasonal outdoor bars and pop-up venues that host summer-long festivals of cabaret and theatre.

London Eye

County Hall, SE1 7PB • Daily: Jan–May & Sept–Dec 11am–6pm; Easter holidays & June–Aug 10am–8.30pm; closed two weeks in Jan for maintenance • £26; £23.45 online • 0871 781 3000, londoneye.com • Waterloo or Westminster

Having graced the skyline since the start of the twenty-first century, the London Eye is one of the city’s most famous landmarks. Standing an impressive 443ft high, it’s the largest Ferris wheel in Europe, weighing over two thousand tonnes, yet as simple and delicate as a bicycle wheel. It’s constantly in slow motion, which means a full circuit in one of its 32 pods (one for each of the city’s boroughs) should take around thirty minutes. Booking online is cheaper, but note that unless you’ve paid extra you’ll still have to queue to get on. Tickets are sold from the box office at the eastern end of County Hall.

Sea Life London Aquarium

County Hall, SE1 7PB • Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, last entry 5pm; Sat, Sun & school holidays 9.30am–7pm, last entry 6pm • £26; £20.40 online • visitsealife.com • Waterloo or Westminster

The most popular attraction in County Hall – the giant building beside the London Eye – is the Sea Life London Aquarium, spread across three subterranean levels. With some super-large tanks, and everything from sharks in the biggest tank and eerie large rays that glide over the walk-through glass tunnel, to turtles and Gentoo penguins, this is an attraction that is almost guaranteed to please kids, albeit at a price (book online; multi-attraction tickets, including the London Eye and Madame Tussauds, are also available).

London Dungeon

County Hall, SE1 7PB • Mon–Wed & Fri 10am–5pm, Thurs 11am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm; school holidays closes 7pm or 8pm • £30; £21–28.50 online • 020 7654 0809, thedungeons.com • Waterloo or Westminster

Gothic horror-fest the London Dungeon remains one of the city’s major crowd-pleasers – to shorten the amount of time spent queuing (and save money), buy your ticket online. Young teenagers and the credulous probably get the most out of the various ludicrous live-action scenarios, each one hyped up by the team of costumed ham-actors; a couple of horror rides and a drink at a mock-Victorian pub complete the experience.

Imperial War Museum

Lambeth Rd, SE1 6HZ • Daily 10am–6pm • Free • 020 7416 5000, london.iwm.org.uk • Lambeth North

Housed in a domed building that was once the infamous lunatic asylum “Bedlam”, the superb Imperial War Museum holds by far the best military museum in the capital. The treatment of the subject is impressively wide-ranging and fairly sober, with the main atrium’s large exhibits described not as weapons but as Witnesses to War, contrasting Harrier jets and a Spitfire with, for example, a bomb-blasted car from Baghdad. Galleries cover the full scope of World War I, in a fully immersive, gruelling display, while the most interesting section on World War II is a look at a local Lambeth family and their wartime lives. The museum also has a harrowing Holocaust Exhibition (not recommended for children under 14). Pulling few punches, it chronicles the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Holocaust, as well as focusing on individual victims, interspersing archive footage with eyewitness accounts from contemporary survivors.

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Bankside

In Tudor and Stuart London, the chief reason for crossing the Thames to Bankside was to visit the disreputable Bankside entertainment district around the south end of London Bridge. Four hundred years on, Londoners are heading to the area once more, thanks to a wealth of top attractions – led by the mighty Tate Modern – that pepper the traffic-free riverside path between Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge. The area is conveniently linked to St Paul’s and the City by the fabulous Norman Foster-designed Millennium Bridge, London’s first pedestrian-only bridge.

Tate Modern

Bankside, SE1 9TG • Daily 10am–6pm, Fri & Sat till 10pm • Free; special exhibitions around £17–18 • 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk • Southwark or Blackfriars

Bankside is dominated by the awesome Tate Modern. Designed as an oil-fired power station by Giles Gilbert Scott, this austere, brick-built “cathedral of power” was converted into a splendid modern art gallery in 2000. Such was its phenomenal success that in 2016 Tate opened a vast new extension, the Blavatnik Building, a distorted prism of latticed bricks that rises to 215ft, above the power station’s three original circular tanks; this extension is topped by a superb, open-air, tenth-floor viewing level. At the centre of this huge art complex is the original, stupendously large Turbine Hall, used for large installations. The original building, the riverside Boiler House, and the extension are connected at the Turbine Hall at Level 0 and via bridges on levels 1 and 4.

Initially, Tate Modern can overwhelm in its size and scope. To ease yourself in, go to the Start Display at the centre of Boiler House’s Level 2. Here, three modest rooms hold some of the Tate’s most illustrious works, including Matisse’s late work The Snail (1953), in order to introduce you to key ideas in modern art. Beyond here you’ll find permanent displays on levels 2 and 4 of the Boiler House and levels 2, 3 and 4 of the Blavatnik Building, where the focus is specifically post-1960s.

The Tate’s permanent collection dates back to 1900, but the curators have largely eschewed a chronological approach and have instead displayed work thematically. They also re-hang spaces regularly, so even big names may not be on show. The Tate has growing collections by artists from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and across the globe; women artists also tend to be well represented. The consequence is that many names will be unfamiliar, but one of the joys of Tate Modern is coming across surprising juxtapositions of instantly recognizable artworks – a Monet water lily, Warhol’s Marilyn or one of the gallery’s numerous Picassos – next to artists about whom you know very little. Several artists get rooms to themselves, among them Mark Rothko, whose abstract “Seagram Murals”, originally destined for a posh restaurant in New York, have their own shrine-like room in the heart of the collection.

Shakespeare’s Globe

21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT • Exhibition and tours daily 9am–5pm; tours every 30min (no Globe tours summer Tues–Sat after 12.30pm) • £15; £11.50 with Bankside tour • 020 7902 1500, shakespearesglobe.com • Southwark or London Bridge

Dwarfed by Tate Modern, but equally remarkable in its own way, Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the open-air polygonal playhouse where most of the Bard’s later works were first performed. The theatre, which boasts the first new thatched roof in central London since the Great Fire of 1666 – and the first candlelit indoor theatre since the advent of electricity – puts on plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, both outside and in the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. To find out more about Shakespeare and the history of Bankside, the Globe’s stylish exhibition is well worth a visit. You can have a virtual play on medieval instruments such as the crumhorn or sackbut, prepare your own edition of Shakespeare, and see some exquisitely authentic costumes up close. Included in the ticket is an informative half-hour guided tour of the theatre; during the summer season, if you visit in the afternoon, you’ll be taken on a tour of the Bankside area instead.

Southwark Cathedral

London Bridge, SE1 9DA • Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat & Sun 8.30am–6pm • Free • 020 7367 6700, cathedral.southwark.anglican.org • London Bridge

Built as the medieval Augustinian priory church of St Mary Overie, Southwark Cathedral was given cathedral status only in 1905. Of the original thirteenth-century church, only the choir and retrochoir now remain, separated by a tall and beautiful stone Tudor screen, making them probably the oldest Gothic structures left in London. The nave was entirely rebuilt in the nineteenth century, but the cathedral contains numerous interesting monuments, from a thirteenth-century oak effigy of a knight to an early twentieth-century memorial to Shakespeare.

Borough Market

Borough High St & Stoney St, SE1 1TL • Mon & Tues some stalls 10am–5pm, Wed & Thurs 10am–5pm, Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 8am–5pm • 020 7407 1002, boroughmarket.org.uk • London Bridge

There has been a produce market near the southern end of London Bridge since medieval times. Borough Market, beneath the railway arches between Borough High Street and Southwark Cathedral, and now sprawling out over a fairly large area, is now best known for its busy specialist food market, with stalls selling top-quality produce from around the world – pungent cheeses, unusual wild mushrooms, oysters, game, charcuterie and far more besides – along with hot food stalls (some of which operate Mon–Sat). It’s very popular on Friday and Saturday so get there early.

The Shard

Railway Approach, SE1 9QU • April–Oct daily 10am–10pm; Nov–March Mon–Wed & Sun 10am–7pm, Thurs–Sat 10am–10pm • £30.95; £25.95 online in advance • 0844 499 7111, theviewfromtheshard.com • London Bridge

London’s – and the country’s – tallest building, Renzo Piano’s 1016ft, tapered, glass-clad tower the Shard rises directly above the remodelled and expanded London Bridge station. In the years since it topped out in 2012, it has become a favourite city landmark, not least because it’s considerably more elegant than some of the towers that have shot up since. Though pricey to visit, the view from the two public galleries at the top is sublime, the highest one open to the elements. From up here everything else in London looks small, from the unicycle of the London Eye to the tiny box that is St Paul’s Cathedral, while the model railway of London Bridge is played out below you.

Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret

9a St Thomas St, SE1 9RY • Daily 10.30am–5pm; closed mid-Dec to early Jan • £6.50; NT members half-price • 020 7188 2679, oldoperatingtheatre.com • London Bridge

By far the most educative and the strangest of Southwark’s museums is the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret. Built in 1821 in a church attic, where the hospital apothecary’s herbs were stored, this women’s operating theatre, reached via a narrow spiral staircase, was once adjacent to the women’s ward of St Thomas’ Hospital (now in Lambeth). Despite being gore-free, the museum is a stomach-churning place: the surgeons would have concentrated on speed and accuracy (most amputations took less than a minute), but there was still a thirty percent mortality rate. The instruments on display are gruesome, while the apothecary’s supplies include snail water and other intriguing concoctions.

HMS Belfast

The Queen’s Walk, SE1 2JH • Daily: March–Oct 10am–6pm; Nov–Feb 10am–5pm • £16, including audioguide • 020 7940 6300, iwm.org.uk/visits/hms-belfast • London Bridge

HMS Belfast, a World War II cruiser, is permanently moored between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Armed with six torpedoes, and six-inch guns with a range of more than fourteen miles, the Belfast spent over two years of the war in the Royal Naval shipyards after being hit by a mine in the Firth of Forth at the beginning of hostilities. Later in the war it saw action in the Barents Sea before supporting the D-Day landings. The ship was also operational during the Korean War, before being decommissioned. It’s fun to explore the maze of cabins, through galleys and workrooms and up to the very top Flag Deck for the views, and right down to the claustrophobic lowest reaches of the ship containing the Boiler and Engine rooms, a spaghetti of pipes and valves that descend for three levels below water level.

City Hall

The Queen’s Walk, SE1 2AA • Mon–Thurs 8.30am–6pm, Fri 8.30am–5.30pm • Free • 020 7983 4000, london.gov.uk • London Bridge

East of the Belfast, overlooking the river, Norman Foster’s startling glass-encased City Hall looks like a giant car headlight or fencing mask, and serves as the headquarters for the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London. Visitors are welcome to stroll up the helical walkway, visit the café and watch proceedings from the second floor.

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Kensington and Chelsea

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens cover a distance of a mile and a half from Oxford Street in the northeast to Kensington Palace, set in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Other districts go in and out of fashion, but this area has been in vogue ever since royalty moved into Kensington Palace in the late seventeenth century.

The most popular tourist attractions lie in South Kensington, where three of London’s top museums – the Victoria and Albert, Natural History and Science museums – stand on land bought with the proceeds of the 1851 Great Exhibition. Chelsea, to the south, once had a slightly more bohemian pedigree. In the 1960s, the King’s Road carved out its reputation as London’s catwalk, while in the late 1970s it was the focus for the city’s punk explosion, though nothing so rebellious could be imagined in Chelsea now.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

Hyde Park Daily 5am–midnight • Kensington Gardens Daily 6am–dusk • Lido May Sat & Sun 10am–6pm; June–Aug daily 10am–6pm • £4.80 • Memorial fountain Daily: March & Oct 10am–6pm; April–Aug 10am–8pm; Sept 10am–7pm; Nov–Feb 10am–4pm • Playground Daily: Feb & late Oct 10am–4.45pm; March & early Oct 10am–5.45pm; April & Sept 10am–6.45pm; May–Aug 10am–7.45pm; Nov–Jan 10am–3.45pm • 0300 061 2114, royalparks.org.uk • Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Knightsbridge or Lancaster Gate

Hangings, muggings, duels and the 1851 Great Exhibition are just some of the public events that have taken place in Hyde Park, which remains a popular spot for political demonstrations and pop concerts. For most of the time, however, the park is simply a lazy leisure ground – a wonderful open space that allows you to lose all sight of the city beyond a few persistent tower blocks.

The park is divided in two by the Serpentine, which has a pretty upper section known as the Long Water, which narrows until it reaches a group of four fountains. In the southern section, you’ll find the popular Lido on its south bank and the Diana Memorial Fountain, less of a fountain and more of a giant oval-shaped mini-moat. The western half of the park is officially Kensington Gardens. In the northwest is the Diana Memorial Playground, featuring a ship stuck in sand and other imaginative playthings; at busy times you may have to queue to get in. The other two most popular attractions are the Serpentine Galleries and the overblown Albert Memorial.

Marble Arch

At Hyde Park’s treeless northeastern corner is Marble Arch, erected in 1828 as a triumphal entry to Buckingham Palace, but now stranded on a busy traffic island at the west end of Oxford Street. This is a historically charged piece of land, as it marks the site of Tyburn gallows, the city’s main public execution spot until 1783. It’s also the location of Speakers’ Corner, a peculiarly English Sunday-morning tradition, featuring an assembly of ranters and hecklers.

Wellington Arch

Hyde Park Corner, W1J 7JZ • Daily: April–Sept 10am–6pm; Oct 10am–5pm; Nov–March 10am–4pm • £5; EH • Hyde Park Corner

At the southeast corner of Hyde Park, the Wellington Arch stands in the midst of Hyde Park Corner, one of London’s busiest traffic interchanges. Erected in 1828, the arch was originally topped by an equestrian statue of the Duke himself, later replaced by Peace driving a four-horse chariot. Inside, you can view an exhibition on the history of the arch, and the Battle of Waterloo, and take a lift to the top of the monument where the exterior balconies offer a bird’s-eye view of the swirling traffic.

Apsley House

149 Piccadilly, W1J 7NT • April–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm; Nov–March Sat & Sun 10am–4pm • £9.30; EH • Hyde Park Corner

Overlooking the traffic whizzing round Hyde Park Corner is Apsley House, Wellington’s London residence and now a museum to the “Iron Duke”. The highlight is the art collection, much of which used to belong to the King of Spain. Among the best pieces, displayed in the Waterloo Gallery on the first floor, are works by de Hooch, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Goya, Rubens and Correggio. The famous, more than twice life-size, nude statue of Napoleon by Antonio Canova stands at the foot of the main staircase.

Serpentine Galleries

Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA • Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; Pavilion mid-June to mid-Oct • Free • 020 7402 6075, serpentinegalleries.org • Knightsbridge or South Kensington

In the southeast corner of Kensington Gardens stands the Serpentine Gallery, built as a tearoom in 1908, but used as a contemporary art gallery since the 1960s. The gallery commissions a leading architect to design a summer pavilion each year. A second exhibition space, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, is housed in a former munitions depot nearby, with a restaurant on the side designed by Zaha Hadid.

Albert Memorial

Kensington Gardens, W2 2UH • Guided tours March–Dec first Sun of month 2pm & 3pm; 45min • Tours £9 • 020 8969 0104 • Knightsbridge or South Kensington

Erected in 1876, the richly decorated, High Gothic Albert Memorial is as much a hymn to the glorious achievements of Britain as to its subject, Queen Victoria’s husband, who died in 1861, possibly of typhoid. Albert occupies the central canopy, gilded from head to toe and clutching a catalogue for the 1851 Great Exhibition that he helped to organize.

Royal Albert Hall

Kensington Gore, SW7 2AP • Guided tours depart from Door 12 every 30min: April–Oct 9.30am–4.30pm; Nov–March 10am–4pm • £12.25 • 0845 401 5045, royalalberthall.com • South Kensington or High Street Kensington

The 1851 Exhibition’s most famous feature – the gargantuan glasshouse of the Crystal Palace – no longer exists, but the profits were used to buy a large tract of land south of the park, now home to South Kensington’s remarkable cluster of museums and colleges, plus the vast Royal Albert Hall, a splendid iron-and-glass-domed concert hall with an exterior of red brick, terracotta and marble that became the hallmark of South Ken architecture. The hall is the venue for Europe’s most democratic music festival, the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, better known as the Proms.

Kensington Palace

Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX • Daily: March–Oct 10am–6pm; Nov–Feb 10am–5pm; last admission 1hr before closing • £17 March–Oct; £16.50 Nov–Feb • 020 3166 6000, hrp.org.uk • Queensway or High Street Kensington

Bought by William and Mary in 1689, the modestly proportioned Jacobean brick mansion of Kensington Palace was the chief royal residence for the next fifty years. It’s best known today as the place where Princess Diana lived from her marriage until her death in 1997, and is now the official residence of a number of royals including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate). Queen Victoria spent an unhappy childhood in the palace, under the steely gaze of her strict German mother. According to her diary, her best friends were the palace’s numerous “black beetles”. Victoria’s apartments have not been preserved, but the permanent Victoria Revealed exhibition traces and examines her life.

The palace is home to the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, which means you usually get to see a few of the frocks worn by Diana, as well as several of the Queen’s dresses. The highlights of the King’s State Apartments are the trompe-l’oeil ceiling paintings by William Kent, particularly those in the Cupola Room, and the paintings in the King’s Gallery by, among others, Tintoretto. The more modest Queen’s State Apartments are lined with royal portraits, all part of the Royal Collection and rotated periodically.

Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)

Entrances on Cromwell Rd and Exhibition Rd, SW7 2RL • Daily 10am–5.45pm, Fri till 10pm • Free; charge for some exhibitions • Guided tours (meet at main entrance) Daily 10.30am, 12.30pm, 1.30pm & 3.30pm • Free • 020 7942 2000, vam.ac.uk • South Kensington

For sheer variety and scale, the Victoria and Albert Museum is the greatest museum of applied arts in the world. Beautifully displayed across a seven-mile, four-storey maze of rooms, the V&A’s treasures are impossible to survey in a single visit; get hold of a floor plan to help you decide which areas to concentrate on, or join a free tour. And if you’re flagging, head for the edifying café in the museum’s period-piece Morris, Gamble & Poynter Rooms.

Perhaps the most precious of the V&A’s many exhibits are the Raphael Cartoons (room 48a, level 1), from the Italian cartone meaning a large piece of paper. They comprise seven vast, full-colour paintings in distemper, which are, in fact, designs for tapestries ordered in 1515 by Pope Leo X for the Sistine Chapel. Also on the ground floor, you’ll find one of the more disorientating sights in the museum, the two enormous Cast Courts, filled with plaster casts of famous sculptural works, created to allow Victorian Londoners to experience the glories of ancient art and including the colossal Trajan’s Column, sliced in half to fit in the room, and a life-sized replica of Michelangelo’s David.

Beyond these, you’ll find the finest collection of Italian sculpture outside Italy, the world’s largest collection of Indian art outside India, plus extensive Chinese, Islamic and Japanese galleries. Among the other highlights are the justifiably popular jewellery section, the beautifully designed Medieval and Renaissance galleries, the British Galleries and the costume and fashion collections. In addition, the V&A’s temporary shows on art, photography and fashion are among the best in Britain, and are now housed in new subterranean gallery spaces built below the gleaming porcelain-tiled Sackler Courtyard, separated from Exhibition Road by the museum’s original Portland stone screen.

Science Museum

Exhibition Rd, SW7 2DD • Daily 10am–6pm; school holidays 10am–7pm • Free; charge for some activities; Wonderlab £8, £6 under-17s • 0870 870 4868, sciencemuseum.org.uk • South Kensington

With galleries large enough to display jet planes and a phenomenal range of interactive exhibits that appeal to all ages, the Science Museum is impressive in its scope, covering every conceivable area of science. Major refurbishments have created some fantastic new displays, including the Zaha Hadid-designed Maths Gallery, though with redesigns ongoing, some areas are closed for the foreseeable future.

On the ground floor, Exploring Space follows the history of rockets and space, with a full-size replica of the Apollo 11 landing craft which deposited US astronauts on the moon in 1969. Making the Modern World displays iconic inventions of modern science and technology, including Robert Stephenson’s Rocket of 1829. Other galleries cover flight – including flight simulators and a vast gallery of flying machines – energy and materials. One of the most popular galleries is the Wonderlab on floor 3, also known as The Statoil Gallery; aimed at 5- to 15-year-olds, it’s packed with dozens of hands-on activities and experiments with magnetism, electric circuits, light and sound.

Natural History Museum

Cromwell Rd, SW7 5BD • Daily 10am–5.50pm • Free • 020 7942 5000, nhm.ac.uk • South Kensington

Alfred Waterhouse’s purpose-built mock-Romanesque colossus ensures the status of the Natural History Museum as London’s most handsome museum, both an important resource for serious zoologists and a major tourist attraction.

The central Hintze Hall is dominated by a full-size, 25m blue-whale skeleton, dramatically suspended from the ceiling. The rest of the museum is divided into four colour-coded zones. The Blue Zone includes the ever-popular Dinosaur gallery, with its fossils and grisly life-sized animatronic dinosaurs. Popular sections over in the Green Zone include the Creepy-Crawlies, and the excellent Investigate centre, where children aged 7 to 14 get to play at being scientists (you need to obtain a timed ticket; reserved for school groups in term-time mornings).

Less visited, the Darwin Centre – also known as the Orange Zone – is dominated by the giant concrete Cocoon, home to more than twenty million specimens, where visitors can learn more about the scientific research and specimen collections. In the nearby Zoology spirit building, you can view a small selection of bits and bobs pickled in glass jars.

If you enter the museum via the side entrance on Exhibition Road, you start at the Red Zone, a visually exciting romp through the earth’s evolution, with the solar system and constellations writ large on the walls and the most intact Stegosaurus skeleton ever found. Boarding the central escalator will take you through a partially formed globe to the top floor and an exhibition on volcanoes and earthquakes, including the slightly tasteless Kobe earthquake simulator.

Design Museum

224–238 Kensington High St, W8 6AG • Daily 10am–6pm • Free; charge for some temporary exhibitions (up to £16) • 020 3862 5900, designmuseum.org • High Street Kensington

One of the most striking 1960s buildings in London, a concrete-framed structure with a sweeping hyperbolic paraboloid roof clad in copper, the former home of the Commonwealth Institute next to Holland Park has been, appropriately enough, taken over by the Design Museum, which moved in at the end of 2016. It hosts numerous temporary exhibitions and events, along with a slightly cramped permanent exhibition, Designer Maker User, which features highlights from the museum’s collection of design classics and everyday objects.

Leighton House Museum

12 Holland Park Rd, W14 8LZ • Mon & Wed–Sun 10am–5.30pm • £9 • 020 7602 3316, rbkc.gov.uk • High Street Kensington

Several wealthy Victorian artists rather self-consciously founded an artists’ colony in the streets that lay to the west of Kensington Gardens. “It will be opulence, it will be sincerity”, Lord Leighton opined before starting work on the remarkable Leighton House in the 1860s – he later became President of the Royal Academy and was ennobled on his deathbed. The big attraction here is the domed Arab Hall, decorated with Saracen tiles, gilded mosaics and latticework drawn from all over the Islamic world. The other rooms are hung with paintings by Lord Leighton and his Pre-Raphaelite chums, and there’s even a Tintoretto.

Chelsea

From the Swinging Sixties up until the era of Punk, Chelsea had a slightly bohemian pedigree; these days, it’s just another wealthy west London suburb. Among the most nattily attired of all those parading down the King’s Road nowadays are the scarlet- or navy-blue-clad Chelsea Pensioners, army veterans from the nearby Royal Hospital.

Saatchi Gallery

Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, SW3 4RY • Daily 10am–6pm • Free • saatchigallery.com • Sloane Square

On the south side of the King’s Road, a short stroll from Sloane Square, the former Duke of York’s HQ, built in 1801, is now the unlikely home of the Saatchi Gallery, which puts on changing exhibitions of contemporary art in its whitewashed rooms. Charles Saatchi, the collector behind the gallery, was the man who promoted the Young British Artists (YBAs) beyond the art world, though these days you’ll find a global roster of contemporary artists represented, along with commercial photography exhibitions.

Royal Hospital

Royal Hospital Rd, SW3 4SR • Grounds Daily: May–Sept 10am–8pm; Oct–April 10am–4.30pm • Free Great Hall & Chapel Mon–Sat 10am–noon & 2–4.40pm, Sun 2–4pm • Free Museum Mon–Fri 10am–4pm • Free • 020 7881 5516, chelsea-pensioners.co.uk • Sloane Square

Founded as a retirement home for army veterans by Charles II in 1682, and designed by Christopher Wren, the Royal Hospital’s majestic red-brick wings and grassy courtyards became a blueprint for institutional and collegiate architecture all over the English-speaking world. The public are welcome to view the austere hospital chapel, and the equally grand, wood-panelled dining hall opposite, where three hundred or so uniformed Pensioners still eat under the royal portraits and the vast allegorical mural of Charles II. On the east side of the hospital, a small museum displays Pensioners’ uniforms, medals and two German bombs.

National Army Museum

Royal Hospital Rd, SW3 4HT • Daily 10am–5.30pm; open until 8pm on first Wed of the month • Free • 020 7730 0717, nam.ac.uk • Sloane Square

The concrete bunker next door to the Royal Hospital, on Royal Hospital Road, houses the National Army Museum. After a complete redesign, the coverage and range of army exhibits is wide-ranging and thoughtful, considering army life and subjects like the ethics of warfare alongside a plethora of historical artefacts, including a huge scale model of the Battle of Waterloo and interactive exhibits such as strategy games.

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North London

Stretching north from the Regent’s Canal and Regent’s Park, home to London Zoo, North London’s neighbourhoods are a historically rich, attractive and eclectic series of villages, now subsumed into the general mass of the city, and with a reputation for a certain sort of wealthy liberal bohemianism. Drawing the tourist hordes, Camden Town has its markets, pubs and live music. The highlights, however, are the village-like suburbs of Hampstead and Highgate, on the edge of London’s wildest patch of greenery, Hampstead Heath.

Regent’s Park

Daily 5am–dusk • Free • 0300 061 2300, royalparks.org.uk • Regent’s Park, Baker Street, Great Portland Street, St John’s Wood or Camden Town

Regent’s Park is one of London’s smartest parks, with a boating lake, ornamental ponds, waterfalls and some lovely gardens. Under the reign of the Prince Regent (later George IV), the park was to be girded by a continuous belt of terraces, and sprinkled with a total of 56 villas, including a magnificent royal palace. Inevitably, the plan was never fully realized, but enough was built to create something of the idealized garden city that Nash and the Prince Regent had envisaged. Within the Inner Circle, the Queen Mary’s Gardens are by far the prettiest section of the park. Prominent on the skyline is the shiny copper dome of London Central Mosque at 146 Park Road, an entirely appropriate addition given the Prince Regent’s taste for the Orient.

London Zoo

Outer Circle, Regent’s Park, NW1 4RY • Zoo Daily: April–Aug 10am–6pm (5pm during Sunset Safaris); March, Sept & Oct 10am–5.30pm; Nov–Feb 10am–4pm • March–Oct £27.04; £24.30 online; Nov–Feb £22.73; £20.45 online • Sunset Safaris June to mid-July Fri 6–10pm • £20.80 online; buy in advance • 020 7722 3333, zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo • Camden Town

The northeastern corner of Regent’s Park is occupied by London Zoo. Founded in 1826 with the remnants of the royal menagerie, the enclosures here are as humane as any inner-city zoo could make them. In recent years, many of the animals have been moved from their classic, architecturally listed homes, such as the famous penguin pool, into more spacious, modern enclosures. Among the biggest hits is the impressive 2500-square-metre Land of the Lions, a scaled-down recreation of an Indian village, that allows for surprisingly close encounters with the big cats. Likewise, Gorilla Kingdom has large viewing areas, while for smaller animals there are some imaginative walk-through enclosures, such as Rainforest Life, with its sleepy sloths, Meet the Monkeys and In with the Lemurs.

Regent’s Canal

The Regent’s Canal, completed in 1820, was constructed as part of a direct link from Birmingham to the newly built London Docks in the East End, covering nine miles, with 42 bridges, twelve locks and two tunnels. The lock-less stretch between Little Venice and Camden Town is the busiest, most attractive section, tunnelling through to Lisson Grove, skirting Regent’s Park, offering back-door views of the aviary at London Zoo and passing straight through the heart of Camden Market. You can walk, jog or cycle along the towpath, but this section of the canal is also served by scheduled narrowboats.

Three companies run daily boat services between Camden and Little Venice, passing through the Maida Hill tunnel. The narrowboat Jenny Wren (March Sat & Sun; April–Oct daily; 2–3 daily; £14 return; 020 7485 4433, walkersquay.com) starts off at Camden, goes through a canal lock (the only company to do so) and heads for Little Venice (with live commentary) before returning; while you can embark on Jason’s narrowboats (April–early Nov 3–4 daily; £9.50 one-way, £14.50 return; jasons.co.uk) at either end (live commentary to Camden); the London Waterbus Company (April–Sept daily; Oct Thurs–Sun; Nov to mid-Dec & Jan–March Sat & Sun, weather permitting; up to 8 daily; £9 one-way, £14 return; with zoo visit £25 from Camden, £27 from Little Venice; 020 7482 2550, londonwaterbus.com) sets off from both places and calls at London Zoo. Journey times are around 45 minutes one-way.

Camden Market

Off Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8A • Camden Lock Market and Stables Market daily 10am–7pm • camdenmarket.com • Camden Town or Chalk Farm

For all its tourist popularity, Camden Market remains a genuinely offbeat place. It began life in the 1970s, as a small craft market in the cobbled courtyard by Camden Lock, and now encompasses several sections; the sheer variety of what’s on offer – from jewellery to furniture, along with a mass of street fashion and clubwear, and plenty of food stalls – is what makes Camden Town so special. More than 100,000 shoppers turn up here each weekend, and most parts of the market now stay open week-long, alongside a crop of shops, cafés and bistros.

Jewish Museum

129–131 Albert St, NW1 7NB • Daily 10am–5pm, Fri until 2pm • £8.50 • 020 7284 7384, jewishmuseum.org.uk • Camden Town

Camden is home to London’s purpose-built Jewish Museum. On the first floor, there’s an engaging exhibition explaining Jewish practices, illustrated by cabinets of Judaica. On the second floor, there’s a special Holocaust gallery which tells the story of Leon Greenman (1920–2008), one of only two British Jews who suffered and survived Auschwitz. The museum also puts on a lively programme of special exhibitions, discussions and concerts, and has a café on the ground floor.

Hampstead

Perched on a hill to the west of Hampstead Heath, Hampstead village developed into a fashionable spa in the eighteenth century, and was not much altered thereafter. Later, it became one of the city’s most celebrated literary quartiers and even now it retains its reputation as a bolthole of the high-profile intelligentsia and discerning pop stars. Proximity to Hampstead Heath is, of course, the real joy of Hampstead; this mixture of woodland, smooth pasture and landscaped garden is quite simply the most exhilarating patch of greenery in London.

Keats’ House

10 Keats Grove, NW3 2RR • March–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm; Nov–Feb Fri–Sun 1–5pm; tours 3pm (30min) • £6.50 (including tour); garden free • 020 7332 3868, cityoflondon.gov.uk/keats • Hampstead Heath Overground or Hampstead

The English Romantic poet John Keats is celebrated at Keats’ House, an elegant, whitewashed Regency double villa off Downshire Hill at the bottom of the High Street. Inspired by the tranquillity of Hampstead and by his passion for girl-next-door Fanny Brawne (whose house is also part of the museum), Keats wrote some of his most famous works here before leaving for Rome, where he died of consumption in 1821, aged just 25. The neat, simple interior contains books, letters and Fanny’s engagement ring, as well as listening posts and a film of Keats’ life.

2 Willow Road

2 Willow Rd, NW3 1TH • March–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm; note that before 3pm, visits are by hourly guided tour • £6.50; NT • 020 7435 6166, nationaltrust.org.uk/2-willow-road • Hampstead Heath Overground or Hampstead

An unassuming red-brick terraced house built in the 1930s by the Hungarian-born architect Ernö Goldfinger (1902–87), 2 Willow Road gives a fascinating insight into the Modernist mindset. This was a state-of-the-art pad when Goldfinger moved in, and as he changed little during the following fifty years, what you see today is a 1930s avant-garde dwelling preserved in aspic, a house both modern and old-fashioned. An added bonus is that the rooms are packed with works of art by the likes of Bridget Riley, Duchamp, Henry Moore and Man Ray.

Freud Museum

20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX • Wed–Sun noon–5pm • £8; 50 percent discount for NT • 020 7435 2002, freud.org.uk • Finchley Road

The Freud Museum is one of the most poignant of London’s house museums. Having lived in Vienna for his entire adult life, the psychotherapist, by now semi-disabled and with only a year to live, was forced to flee the Nazis, arriving in London in the summer of 1938. The ground-floor study and library look exactly as they did when Freud lived here; the collection of erotic antiquities and the famous couch, sumptuously draped in Persian rugs, were all brought here from Vienna. Upstairs, home movies of family life are shown continually, and a small room is dedicated to Freud’s daughter, Anna, herself an influential child analyst, who lived in the house until her death in 1982.

Hampstead Heath

Daily 24hr • Free • Hill Garden Daily 8.30am–dusk • 020 7332 3322, cityoflondon.gov.uk • Men’s and women’s bathing ponds Daily year-round from 7am, closing time varies • Mixed pond Mid-May to mid-Sept daily 7am–6.30pm • £2 • Hampstead tube and Hampstead Heath or Gospel Oak Overground; bus #210 from Hampstead or Golders Green or #24 from central London, including Tottenham Court Rd and Camden

Hampstead Heath may not have much of its original heathland left, but it packs a wonderful variety of bucolic scenery into its eight hundred acres. At its southern end are the rolling green pastures of Parliament Hill, north London’s premier spot for kite flying, and with unrivalled views over the London skyline. On either side are numerous ponds, three of which – one for men, one for women and one mixed – you can swim in. The thickest woodland is to be found in the West Heath, beyond Whitestone Pond, also the site of the most formal section, Hill Garden: a secluded and romantic little gem with eccentric balustraded terraces and 800ft pergola, which create an alluring sense of faded grandeur. Beyond lies Golders Hill Park, where you can gaze at pygmy goats and fallow deer, and inspect the impeccably maintained aviaries, home to flamingos, cranes and other exotic birds.

Kenwood House

Hampstead Lane, NW3 7JR • Daily: April–Oct 10am–5pm; Nov–March 10am–4pm • Free • 020 8348 1286, english-heritage.org.uk • Bus #210 from Archway or Golders Green

Hampstead Heath’s most celebrated sight is the whitewashed Neoclassical mansion of Kenwood House, set within landscaped grounds dotted with sculptures. The house is home to a collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art, including a handful of real masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Boucher, Gainsborough and Reynolds. Of the period interiors, the most spectacular is Robert Adam’s sky-blue and pink library.

Highgate Cemetery

Swain’s Lane, N6 6PJ • East Cemetery March–Oct Mon–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 11am–5pm; Nov–Feb closes 4pm; guided tours Sat 2pm • £4, guided tours £8 West Cemetery Guided tours only: March–Oct Mon–Fri 1.45pm, Sat & Sun every 30min 11am–3pm; Nov–Feb Sat & Sun hourly 11am–3pm • £12; no under-8s • 020 8340 1834, highgatecemetery.org • Archway

Highgate Cemetery, ranged on both sides of Swain’s Lane, is London’s best-known graveyard. The most illustrious incumbent of the East Cemetery is Karl Marx. Marx himself asked for a simple grave topped by a headstone, but by 1954 the Communist movement decided to move his grave to a more prominent position and erect the hulking bronze bust that now surmounts a granite plinth. To visit the more atmospheric and overgrown West Cemetery, with its spooky Egyptian Avenue and sunken catacombs, you must take a guided tour. Among the prominent graves usually visited are those of artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall.

The Swaminarayan temple

105–119 Brentfield Rd, NW10 8LD • Temple Daily 9am–6pm • Free • Exhibition Mon–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat & Sun 9am–6pm • £2 • 020 8965 2651, londonmandir.baps.org • Neasden

Perhaps the most remarkable building in the whole of London lies just off the North Circular, in the glum suburb of Neasden. Here, rising majestically above the surrounding semi-detached houses, is the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a traditional Hindu temple topped with domes and shikharas, erected in 1995 in a style and scale unseen outside of India for over a millennium. You enter through the Haveli (cultural complex) and, after taking off your shoes, proceed to the Mandir (temple) itself, carved entirely out of Carrara marble, with every possible surface transformed into a honeycomb of arabesques, flowers and seated gods. Beneath the Mandir, an exhibition explains the basic tenets of Hinduism, details the life of Lord Swaminarayan, and includes a video about the history of the building.

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South London

Spreading out from the river that marks the city’s great divide – both real and imagined – South London is formed by a series of distinctive, often underrated neighbourhoods, villages subsumed into the city with the railways and industrialization. It includes one outstanding area for sightseeing, Greenwich, with its fantastic ensemble of the Royal Naval College, the Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory and the beautifully landscaped royal park. Other standouts are the Dulwich Picture Gallery, a superb public art gallery older than the National Gallery, and the eclectic Horniman Museum in neighbouring Forest Hill, plus a few diverse, busy neighbourhoods worth exploring, Brixton chief among them.

Greenwich

Greenwich draws tourists out from the centre in considerable numbers. At its heart is the outstanding architectural set piece of the Old Royal Naval College and the Queen’s House, courtesy of Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones respectively. Most visitors, however, come to see the Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum and Greenwich Park’s Royal Observatory. With the added attractions of its parkland, covered market of crafts, antiques and food stalls, riverside pubs and walks – plus startling views across to Canary Wharf and Docklands – it makes for one of the best days out in the capital. To reach Greenwich, you can take a train from London Bridge (every 30min) or the DLR to Cutty Sark station (every 4–10min), but by far the most scenic option is by boat from one of the piers in central London (every 20–30min), with Thames Clippers.

Cutty Sark

King William Walk, SE10 9HT • Daily 10am–5pm • £13.50; combined ticket with Observatory £18.50 • 020 8312 6608, rmg.co.uk • Cutty Sark DLR

Wedged in a dry dock by the river is the majestic Cutty Sark, the world’s last surviving tea clipper. Launched in 1869, the Cutty Sark was actually more famous in its day as a wool clipper, returning from Australia in just 72 days. The vessel’s name comes from Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter, in which Tam, a drunken farmer, is chased by Nannie, an angry witch in a short Paisley linen dress, or “cutty sark”; the clipper’s figurehead shows her clutching the hair from the tail of Tam’s horse. After a devastating fire in 2007, the ship has been beautifully restored, and you can explore the bunks, officers’ quarters and below-deck storage, where there are interactive displays.

Old Royal Naval College

SE10 9NN • Daily: grounds 8am–11pm; buildings 10am–5pm • Free • 020 8269 4747, ornc.org • Cutty Sark DLR

Making the most of its riverbank location, the Old Royal Naval College is a majestic Baroque ensemble designed, for the most part, by Wren. Initially built as a royal palace, but eventually converted into the Royal Hospital for Seamen, the complex was later home to the Royal Naval College, but now houses the University of Greenwich and the Trinity Laban. The two grandest rooms, situated underneath Wren’s twin domes, are open to the public and well worth visiting. The Chapel, in the east wing, has exquisite pastel-shaded plasterwork and spectacular, decorative detailing on the ceiling, all designed by James “Athenian” Stuart after a fire in 1799 destroyed the original interior. Opposite the chapel is the magnificent Painted Hall in the west wing, which is dominated by James Thornhill’s gargantuan allegorical ceiling painting, and his trompe-l’oeil fluted pilasters (reopening after renovation in 2019). Over in the Pepys Building, you can get a good overview of Greenwich’s history in Discover Greenwich, where there’s an information desk and historical displays.

National Maritime Museum

Romney Rd, SE10 9NF • Daily 10am–5pm; Ahoy! and All Hands: Tues, Sat, Sun & hols 10am–5pm, Mon & Wed–Fri 2–5pm, open other times if no school groups • Free; charge for special exhibitions • 020 8312 6608, rmg.co.uk • Cutty Sark DLR

The main building of the National Maritime Museum is centred on a glass-roofed courtyard, which houses the museum’s largest artefacts, among them the splendid 63ft-long gilded Royal Barge, designed in Rococo style by William Kent for Prince Frederick, the much unloved eldest son of George II. The various themed galleries are superb, and stuffed full of model ships and curious artefacts, including Nelson’s coat. Several well-designed sections are just for kids: Ahoy! is a nautically themed play area for under-7s on the ground floor; while the second-floor All Hands gallery gives older kids a taste of life on the seas.

Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House, originally built amid a rambling Tudor royal palace, is now the focal point of the Greenwich ensemble, and is part of the Maritime Museum. As royal residences go, it’s an unassuming country house, but as the first Neoclassical building in the country, it has enormous architectural significance. You enter via the beautiful Tulip Staircase, Britain’s earliest cantilevered spiral staircase – its name derives from the floral patterning in the wrought-iron balustrade – which takes you to the Great Hall, a perfect cube. The rooms here show the museum’s art collection, ranging from royal portraits and scenes of Greenwich to nautical scenes, plus a few navigational instruments.

Royal Observatory

Greenwich Park, SE10 9NF • Flamsteed House Daily 10am–5pm • £9.50, including audioguide; combined ticket with Cutty Sark £18.50 • Astronomy Centre Daily 10am–5pm • Free • Planetarium Shows every 45min • £7.50; combined ticket with Flamsteed House £12.50 • 020 8312 6565, rmg.co.uk • Greenwich DLR/train station

Perched on the crest of Greenwich Park’s highest hill – and so with sublime views over to Canary Wharf – the Royal Observatory was established by Charles II in 1675. It’s housed in a rather dinky Wren-built red-brick building, whose northeastern turret sports a bright-red time-ball that climbs the mast at 12.58pm and drops at 1pm GMT precisely; it was added in 1833 to allow ships on the Thames to set their clocks.

Greenwich’s greatest claim to fame, of course, is as the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and the Prime Meridian. Since 1884, Greenwich has occupied zero longitude, the Meridian Line marked by the strip in the observatory’s main courtyard. The observatory housed the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, whose chief task was to study the night sky in order to discover an astronomical method of finding the longitude of a ship at sea. Beyond the Octagon Room, where the king used to show off to his guests, are the Time galleries, which display four of the clocks designed by John Harrison, including “H4”, which helped win the Longitude Prize in 1763.

The free Astronomy Centre galleries give a brief rundown of some of the big questions of the universe, and you can also watch one of the thirty-minute presentations in the Planetarium.

Brixton

Market stalls Mon–Sat 8am–6pm, Wed till 3pm • Brixton Village and Market Row Mon 8am–6pm, Tues–Sun 8am–11.30pm (shops shut earlier; check individual café and restaurant times) • Farmers’ market Sun 9.30am–2.30pm • brixtonmarket.net • Pop Brixton Mon–Wed & Sun 9am–11pm, Thurs–Sat 9am–midnight • popbrixton.org • Brixton

Brixton is a classic Victorian suburb, transformed from open fields into bricks and mortar in a couple of decades following the arrival of the railways in the 1860s. The viaducts dominate central Brixton, with shops and arcades hidden under their arches, but it’s the West Indian community, who arrived here in the 1950s and 1960s, who define the character of the place. These days the area’s revived indoor markets attract increasing numbers of visitors to a plethora of small restaurants and bars, making this always busy, noisy neighbourhood even more frenetic. As you leave the tube, directly opposite, you’ll see the bright mural of David Bowie, who was born in Brixton in 1947; it became a shrine to Bowie on his death in January 2016.

The main axis for the market is Electric Avenue, which runs behind the tube station, so called as it was one of the first London shopping streets to be lit by electricity in the 1880s. From here you can find the arcades of Market Row and Brixton Village, which create a maze of activity. Nearby, Pop Brixton, on the corner of Pope’s Road and Brixton Station Road, is a shipping-container-built mini village of shops and street-food traders, plus a couple of tiny but excellent restaurants, outdoor bars and an events space.

Clockwise from top left Highgate Cemetery; Design Museum; Kew Gardens; Buckingham Palace

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Gallery Rd, SE21 7AD • Tues–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 11am–5pm • Permanent collection £7; exhibitions (including entry to permanent collection) around £15.50 • 020 8693 5254, dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk • West Dulwich (from Victoria) or North Dulwich (from London Bridge) train stations

Dulwich Picture Gallery, the nation’s oldest public art gallery, was designed by John Soane in 1814, who created a beautifully spacious building, awash with natural light. The collection was acquired on behalf of the King of Poland, who lost his kingdom before he could take possession of it; it was then bequeathed to the foundation of Dulwich, and is crammed with superb paintings: elegiac landscapes by Cuyp, one of the world’s finest Poussin series, and splendid works by Gainsborough, Van Dyck, Canaletto and Rubens, plus Rembrandt’s beautiful Girl at a Window. At the centre of the museum, look out for the tiny mausoleum designed by Soane for the sarcophagi of the gallery’s founders. The temporary exhibitions are often excellent and there’s a good café, overlooking the museum’s well-tended gardens.

Horniman Museum

100 London Rd, SE23 3PQ • Daily 10.30am–5.30pm • Free; aquarium £4; butterfly house £5.40; charge for temporary exhibitions (around £7) • 020 8699 1872, horniman.ac.uk • Forest Hill train station from Victoria or London Bridge

The wonderful Horniman Museum was purpose-built in 1901 by Frederick Horniman, a tea trader with a passion for collecting. In addition to the museum’s natural history collection of stuffed birds and animals – with a majestic, overstuffed walrus its centrepiece – there’s an eclectic ethnographic collection, and a music gallery with more than 1500 instruments from Chinese gongs to electric guitars. The gardens, with animal trail, butterfly house, bandstand and glasshouse, and with views over South London, are charming, and there’s an aquarium in the basement.

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West London

Running through the swathes of green, suburban West London is the River Thames, once the “Great Highway of London” and still the most pleasant way to travel in these parts during summer. Boats plough up the Thames all the way from central London via the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the picturesque riverside at Richmond, as far as Hampton Court. In among the commuter-belt suburbs are several picturesque former country retreats. The Palladian villa of Chiswick House is perhaps the best known, as well as popular Syon House, a showcase for the talents of Robert Adam.

Chiswick House

Burlington Lane, W4 2RP • House April–Oct Mon–Wed & Sun 10am–6pm; Oct closes 5pm; March Sat & Sun 10am–4pm • £7.20; EH • Gardens Daily 7am–dusk • Free • 020 8995 0508, chgt.org.uk • Chiswick train station from Waterloo or Turnham Green

Chiswick House is a perfect little Neoclassical villa, designed in the 1720s by the Earl of Burlington, and set in one of the most beautifully landscaped gardens in London. Like its prototype, Palladio’s Villa Rotonda near Vicenza, the house was created as a “temple to the arts” where, amid his fine art collection, Burlington could entertain artistic friends such as Swift, Handel and Pope. Entertaining took place on the upper floor, a series of cleverly interconnecting rooms, each enjoying a wonderful view out onto the gardens – all, that is, except the Tribunal, the domed octagonal hall at the centre of the villa, where the earl’s finest paintings and sculptures are displayed.

London Museum of Water and Steam

Green Dragon Lane, TW8 0EN • Daily 11am–4pm • £12.50 • 020 8568 4757, waterandsteam.org.uk • Bus #237 or #267 from Gunnersbury or Kew Bridge train station (from Waterloo)

Difficult to miss, thanks to its stylish Italianate standpipe tower, the Museum of Water and Steam occupies a former Victorian pumping station, 100 yards west of Kew Bridge. At the heart of the museum is the Steam Hall, which contains a triple expansion steam engine and four gigantic nineteenth-century Cornish beam engines. The museum also has a hands-on Waterworks gallery in the basement, devoted to the history of the capital’s water supply, and Splash Zone, ideal for younger kids. The best time to visit is at weekends, when each of the museum’s industrial dinosaurs is put through its paces, and the small narrow-gauge steam Waterworks Railway runs back and forth round the yard.

Syon House

London Rd, TW8 8JF • House Mid-March to Oct Wed, Thurs & Sun 11am–5pm • £12.50 (includes gardens) • Gardens Mid-March to Oct daily 10.30am–5pm • £7.50 • 020 8560 0882, syonpark.co.uk • Bus #237 or #267 from Gunnersbury or Kew Bridge train station (from Waterloo)

From its rather plain castellated exterior, you’d never guess that Syon House contains the most opulent eighteenth-century interiors in London. The splendour of Robert Adam’s refurbishment is immediately revealed, however, in the pristine Great Hall, an apsed double cube with a screen of Doric columns at one end and classical statuary dotted around the edges. There are several more Adam-designed rooms to admire in the house, in particular the Long Gallery – 136ft by just 14ft – plus a smattering of works by Lely, Van Dyck and others.

While Adam beautified Syon House, Capability Brown laid out its gardens around an artificial lake, surrounding it with oaks, beeches, limes and cedars. The gardens’ chief focus now, however, is the crescent-shaped Great Conservatory, an early nineteenth-century addition which is said to have inspired Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace.

Kew Gardens

Kew Green or Kew Road, TW9 3AE • April–Sept Mon–Thurs 10am–6.30pm, Fri–Sun 10am–7.30pm (till 9pm June; till 8.30pm mid-July to Aug); Oct daily 10am–6pm; Nov & Jan daily 10am–4.15pm; Dec daily 10am–3.30pm; March daily 10am–5.45pm • £16.50; £15.50 online • 020 8332 5655, kew.org • Kew Gardens, then a short walk down Lichfield Rd to Victoria Gate

Established in 1759, Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens manage the extremely difficult task of being both a world leader in botanic research and an extraordinarily beautiful and popular public park. There’s always something to see, whatever the season, but to get the most out of the place come some time between spring and autumn, bring a picnic and stay for the day.

Of all the glasshouses, by far the most celebrated is the Palm House, a curvaceous mound of glass and wrought iron, designed by Decimus Burton in the 1840s. Its drippingly humid atmosphere nurtures most of the known palm species. Elsewhere in the gardens, you’ll find the Treetop Walkway, which lifts you 60ft off the ground, and gives you a novel view of the tree canopy, a 163ft-high Pagoda, an art gallery, and various follies and semi-wild areas. The newest addition is the Hive, a 17m-high honeycomb structure that takes you inside the world of honeybees using 900 LED lights and the sound of 40,000 bees.

The three-storey red-brick mansion of Kew Palace (April–Oct only), to the northwest of the Palm House, was bought by George II as a nursery and schoolhouse for his umpteen children. Later, George III was confined to the palace and subjected to the dubious attentions of doctors who attempted to find a cure for his “madness”.

River transport: heading west

From April to October Westminster Passenger Services runs a scheduled service from Westminster Pier to Kew, Richmond and Hampton Court (departure times vary, but the first boat from Westminster usually leaves around 10.30am and the last around 2pm; your last chance to get back from Kew to Westminster is usually 5.30pm; 1hr 30min to Kew, around 3hr to Hampton Court; £13 single to Kew, £20 return; £17 to Hampton Court, £25 return; 020 7930 2062, wpsa.co.uk). In addition, Turks runs a regular service from Richmond to Hampton Court (around 3 daily; to mid-Sept Tues–Sun; Aug daily; £9 single, £10.80 return; 1hr 45min; 020 8546 2434, turks.co.uk). For the latest on boat services on the Thames, see tfl.gov.uk.

Richmond

Richmond, upriver from Kew, basked for centuries in the glow of royal patronage, with Plantagenet kings and Tudor monarchs frequenting the riverside palace. Although most of the courtiers and aristocrats have gone, it is still a wealthy district, with two theatres, riverside walks and spacious, leafy upmarket residential streets.

Richmond Park

Daily: March–Sept 7am–dusk; Oct–Feb 7.30am–dusk • Free • 0300 061 2200, royalparks.org.uk • Bus #371 from Richmond to Richmond Gate or #65 from Richmond to Petersham Gate

Richmond’s greatest attraction is the enormous Richmond Park, at the top of Richmond Hill – 2500 acres of undulating grassland and bracken, dotted with coppiced woodland and as wild as anything in London. Eight miles across at its widest point, this is Europe’s largest city park, famed for its red and fallow deer, which roam freely, and for its ancient oaks. For the most part untamed, the park does have a couple of deliberately landscaped plantations that feature splendid springtime azaleas and rhododendrons.

Ham House

Ham St , TW10 7RS • House April–Oct daily noon–4pm; Jan–March visits by guided tour only (Mon–Fri hourly noon–3pm, Sat & Sun noon–4pm); gardens daily 10am–5pm • £10.80; NT • 020 8940 1950, nationaltrust.org.uk/ham-house-and-garden • Bus #371 or #65 from Richmond

Leave the rest of London far behind at Ham House, home to the earls of Dysart for nearly three hundred years. Expensively furnished in the seventeenth century, but little altered since then, the house is blessed with one of the finest Stuart interiors in the country, from the stupendously ornate Great Staircase to the Long Gallery, featuring six “Court Beauties” by Peter Lely. Elsewhere, there are several fine Verrio ceiling paintings, some exquisite parquet flooring and works by Van Dyck and Reynolds. Also glorious are the formal seventeenth-century gardens, especially the Cherry Garden, laid out with an aromatic lavender parterre. The Orangery, overlooking the original kitchen garden, serves as a tearoom.

Strawberry Hill

268 Waldegrave Rd, TW1 4ST • House March–Oct Mon–Wed & Sun hours vary but generally 11am–5pm • £12.50 • Garden Daily 10am–6pm • Free • 020 8744 1241, strawberryhillhouse.org.uk • Strawberry Hill train station from Waterloo

In 1747 writer, wit and fashion queen Horace Walpole, youngest son of former prime minister Robert Walpole, bought this “little play-thing house … the prettiest bauble you ever saw … set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges”, renamed it Strawberry Hill and set about inventing the most influential building in the Gothic Revival. Walpole appointed a “Committee of Taste” to embellish his project with details from other Gothic buildings: screens from Old St Paul’s and Rouen cathedrals, and fan vaulting from Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Walpole wanted visits of Strawberry Hill to be a theatrical experience, and, with its eccentric Gothic decor, it remains so to this day.

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Hampton Court

Hampton Court Rd, KT8 9AU • Palace Daily: April–Oct 10am–6pm; Nov–March closes 4.30pm; last entry 1hr before closing • £20.90 (tickets £1–3 cheaper online) • Magic Garden April–Oct daily 10am–6pm, last admission 5.15pm • £7.70, kids aged 3–15 £5.50 (includes Maze) • 020 3166 6000, hrp.org.uk • Hampton Court train station from Waterloo

Hampton Court Palace, a sprawling red-brick ensemble on the banks of the Thames thirteen miles southwest of London, is the finest of England’s royal abodes. Built in 1516 by the upwardly mobile Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, it was purloined by Henry himself after Wolsey fell from favour. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Charles II laid out the gardens, inspired by what he had seen at Versailles, while William and Mary had large sections of the palace remodelled by Wren a few years later.

Audioguides are available and free guided tours are led by period-costumed historians who bring the place to life. It’s worth taking a day to explore fully – Hampton Court is huge – but the most rewarding sections are: Henry VIII’s Apartments, which feature the glorious double-hammer-beamed Great Hall and Chapel Royal, with vaulted ceiling adorned with gilded cherubs; William III’s Apartments, covered in militaristic trompe-l’oeil paintings; Henry VIII’s Kitchens; and the Cumberland Art Gallery, which display a superb selection of works from the Royal Collection.

Overlooked by Wren’s magnificent South Front is the formal Privy Garden, laid out as it would have been under William III. Here is the palace’s celebrated Great Vine, whose grapes are sold at the palace each year in September. Close by is the gallery housing The Triumphs of Caesar, a series of heroic canvases by Andrea Mantegna from around 1486. To the west, the magnificent Broad Walk runs north for half a mile from the Thames. Halfway along lies the indoor Royal Tennis Court, used for real tennis, an arcane precursor of the modern game.

To the north of the palace the informal Wilderness area contains the famous trapezoidal Maze, laid out in 1714. Also on this side of the palace grounds is the gorgeous Rose Garden and an elaborate adventure playground for kids called the Magic Garden.

Arrival and departure: London

BY PLANE

The capital’s five international airports – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and City Airport – are all less than an hour from the city centre.

Heathrow

Some 15 miles west of central London, Heathrow (heathrowairport.com) has five terminals and three train/tube stations: one for terminals 1, 2 and 3, and separate ones for terminals 4 and 5; Oyster and contactless can be used on the Underground and Elizabeth Line, and Heathrow Express (as of mid-2018).

Heathrow Express High-speed trains travel nonstop to Paddington Station (Mon–Sat 5.15am–11.20pm, Sun 6.20am–11.20pm; every 15min; journey 15min; £22–25 one-way off-peak, £37 return, more if you purchase your ticket on board; heathrowexpress.com).

Elizabeth Line Formerly Heathrow Connect, the new Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) service will run four trains an hour from terminals 2, 3 and 4 to Paddington from May 2018 (with a service from terminal 5 from December 2019 onwards), with several stops on the way.

Underground The Piccadilly tube line runs directly into central London (daily 5am–11pm; Fri & Sat 24hr from terminals 1, 2, 3 & 5 only; every 5min; journey 50min–1hr); £3.10 off-peak, £5.10 peak (Mon–Fri 6.30–9.30am) with Oyster card.

National Express Bus services run direct to Victoria Coach Station (daily 4.20am–10.10pm; every 20min–1hr; journey 40min–1hr; £6–£13.50 one-way; nationalexpress.com).

Gatwick

Around 30 miles south of London, Gatwick Airport (gatwickairport.com) has good transport connections; you can pay by Oyster and contactless on train services (though it’s cheaper to buy returns in advance).

Gatwick Express Nonstop service between the airport’s South Terminal and Victoria Station (daily 5.50am–11.20am; every 15min; journey 30min; £17.80 one-way, £31.60 return, if bought online; group savings and other discounts available; gatwickexpress.com).

Southern and Thameslink trains Other train options include Southern services to Victoria (daily 5.40am–11pm, roughly every 15min; Fri & Sat hourly night service; 35min) and Thameslink services to various stations (24hr; every 15–30min; journey 30–45min), including Blackfriars and St Pancras; one-way tickets with Oyster: peak £16.50, off-peak £10.30; return £19.80.

National Express Buses run from Gatwick direct to central London (daily 24hr; 1–2 hourly; 1hr 30min; £6–£10 one-way).

stansted

Roughly 35 miles northeast of the capital, Stansted (stanstedairport.com) is mainly used by the budget airlines.

Stansted Express The most convenient way to get into town is by train on the Stansted Express to Liverpool Street (daily 5.30am–12.30am; every 15–30min; journey 45min; £16.60 one-way, £28 return; stanstedexpress.com).

National Express Buses to Liverpool Street, Stratford, Waterloo, Victoria Coach Station and Paddington (daily 24hr; every 20–30min; journey 1hr–1hr 45min), with tickets around £8–13 one-way.

city airport

London’s smallest airport, City Airport, which handles almost entirely domestic and European flights (londoncityairport.com), is in Docklands, 10 miles east of central London. Docklands Light Railway (DLR) will take you straight to Bank in the City (Mon–Sat 5.30am–12.15am, Sun 7am–11.15pm; every 8–15min; journey 20min); pay by Oyster or contactless (see opposite).

Luton

Around 30 miles north of London, Luton (london-luton.co.uk) handles mostly charter flights.

Luton Airport Parkway A free shuttle bus (every 10min; 5min) transports passengers to Luton Airport Parkway train station, connected to St Pancras (daily 24hr; every 15–30min; journey 25–45min; one-way £14) and other stations in central London.

Buses Green Line runs the #757 coach from Luton Airport to Victoria Coach Station (daily 24hr; every 20min–1hr; journey 1hr–1hr 30min; one-way £10, return £17; www.greenline.co.uk), stopping at several locations en route. National Express runs buses to Victoria Coach Station (daily 24hr; every 20min–1hr; journey 1hr 5min–1hr 20min; £6–12 one-way).

BY TRAIN

From Europe Eurostar (eurostar.com) trains arrive at St Pancras International, next door to King’s Cross.

From Britain Arriving by train from elsewhere in Britain, you’ll come into one of London’s mainline stations, all of which have adjacent Underground stations. As a rough guide, Charing Cross handles services to Kent; Euston to the Midlands, northwest England and Glasgow; Fenchurch Street to south Essex; King’s Cross to northeast England and Scotland; Liverpool Street to eastern England; Marylebone to the Midlands; Paddington to west and southwest England, including Oxford, Bath and Bristol; St Pancras for Eurostar and the southeast, plus trains to the East Midlands and South Yorkshire; Victoria to destinations south, including Brighton; and Waterloo directly southwest of London, including Southampton and Salisbury.

Information National Rail Enquiries (0345 748 4950, nationalrail.co.uk).

Destinations

Charing Cross to: Canterbury West (hourly; 1hr 40min); Dover Priory (every 30min; 1hr 40min–2hr); Hastings (every 30min; 1hr 35min–1hr 50min); Rochester (every 30min; 1hr 15min).

Euston to: Birmingham New Street (every 20min; 1hr 25min); Carlisle (hourly; 3hr 25min); Lancaster (hourly; 2hr 30min); Liverpool Lime Street (hourly; 2hr 10min); Manchester Piccadilly (every 20min; 2hr 5min).

King’s Cross to: Cambridge (every 30min; 45min); Durham (hourly; 2hr 55min); Leeds (every 30min; 2hr 15min); Newcastle (every 30min; 2hr 50min–3hr 15min); York (every 20–30min; 1hr 50min–2hr 30min).

Liverpool Street to: Cambridge (every 30min; 1hr 15min); Norwich (every 30min; 1hr 45min–1hr 55min).

London Bridge to: Brighton (every 30min; 1hr).

Paddington to: Bath (every 30min; 1hr 30min); Bristol (every 15–30min; 1hr 20min–1hr 40min); Cheltenham (every 2hr; 2hr 15min); Exeter (every 30min–1hr; 2hr 15min–2hr 50min); Gloucester (every 2hr; 2hr); Oxford (every 30min; 55min); Penzance (every 1–2hr; 5hr 30min); Plymouth (hourly; 3hr 15min–3hr 40min); Worcester (hourly; 2hr 20min–2hr 50min).

St Pancras to: Brighton (every 30min; 1hr 15min); Canterbury (every 30min–1hr; 55min); Dover Priory (every 30min–hourly; 1hr 5min); Leicester (every 15–30min; 1hr–1hr 35min); Nottingham (2 hourly; 1hr 40min–2hr); Rochester (every 30min; 35min); Sheffield (every 30min; 2hr–2hr 20min).

Victoria to: Arundel (Mon–Sat every 30min, Sun hourly; 1hr 30min); Brighton (every 30min; 50min); Canterbury East (every 30min–1hr; 1hr 40min); Chichester (1–2 hourly; 1hr 30min); Dover Priory (Mon–Sat every 30min; 2hr–2hr 15min); Lewes (Mon–Sat every 30min, Sun hourly; 1hr–1hr 10min); Rochester (every 30min; 40min–1hr).

Waterloo to: Portsmouth Harbour (every 15–30min; 1hr 40min–2hr 15min); Southampton Central (every 30min; 1hr 15min); Winchester (every 30min; 1hr).

BY BUS

Victoria Coach Station Coming into London by coach, you’re most likely to arrive at Victoria Coach Station, a couple of hundred yards south down Buckingham Palace Rd from the train and Underground stations of the same name. Journey times leaving London can vary considerably: maximum times are given, but avoid travelling by coach during the afternoon rush hour if you can.

Information Traveline (0871 200 2233, traveline.info) or National Express (0871 781 8181, nationalexpress.com).

Destinations Bath (hourly–every 1hr 30min; 3hr 15min); Birmingham (every 30min; 3hr 20min); Brighton (every 30min–1hr 30min; 3hr); Bristol (every 2hr; 3hr); Cambridge (every 30min–1hr 30min; 2hr); Canterbury (hourly–every 1hr 30min; 2hr 40min); Dover (8 daily; 3hr–3hr 30min); Exeter (every 2–3hr; 4hr 30min); Gloucester (every 1–2hr; 3hr 25min); Liverpool (every 1–2hr; 6hr 15min); Manchester (every 1hr 30min; 6hr 25min); Newcastle (4 daily; 7hr 55min); Oxford (every 20min; 2hr); Plymouth (5 daily; 6hr 20min); Stratford (3 daily; 3hr 45min).

Getting about: Oyster cards and contactless payment

For all London transport, the cheapest, easiest ticketing option is an Oyster card, London’s transport smartcard, available from all tube stations and TfL Visitor Centres. Use it either to store a weekly/monthly travelcard, or as a pay-as-you-go card. As you enter the tube or bus, simply touch in your card at the card reader. On a tube or train, you need to touch out again, or a maximum cash fare of up to £7.80 will be deducted; on a bus, you only touch in. A pay-as-you-go Oyster operates daily and weekly price-capping; you will stop being charged when you have this (£6.60 for zones 1–2 for a day; £33 for a week, running Mon–Sun), but you still need to touch in (and out). Unless you’re buying a monthly or yearly Oyster card, it costs £5 for the card (refundable on return), or visitors can buy a Visitor Oyster card for £3, plus the amount of credit you want.

If you have a debit or credit card or smart phone with a contactless payment function, you can use this in the same way as a pay-as-you-go Oyster card, with the same fares and price-capping (make sure that you use the same card all day). British Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards work; for cards issued outside the UK, American Express and most but not all MasterCard and Visa with contactless payment should work. However, any overseas bank charges will apply to each use.

Children under 11 travel for free; children aged 11–15 travel free on all buses and at child rate on the tube; children aged 16 or 17 can travel at half the adult rate on all forms of transport. Children 11 years old and over must have a Zip Oyster photocard; apply in advance online (£15 for 11–15 year olds; £20 for 16–17 year olds). Visitors from outside the UK will need to pick this up from a TfL Visitor Centre (see above).

Other travelcards and passes are available, too; check tfl.gov.uk for details.

Getting around

London’s transport network is complex and expensive, but will get you wherever you want at most hours of the day or night. Avoid travelling during the rush hour (Mon–Fri 8–9.30am & 5–7pm), when tubes become unbearably crowded, and some buses get so full that they won’t let you on. You’re best using Oyster or a contactless payment card (see box below).

Information

Transport for London (TfL) For maps, route planning and information see tfl.gov.uk, or call 0343 222 1234.

Visitor Centres TfL has Visitor Centres, where you can buy Oyster cards and get information, at: Piccadilly Circus (daily 9.30am–4pm); Liverpool Street (daily 9am–5pm); Victoria (daily 8am–6pm); Euston, King’s Cross Underground and Paddington (all Mon–Sat 8am–6pm, Sun 8.30am–6pm); Heathrow terminals 2 & 3 Underground station (daily 7.30am–8.30pm); and Gatwick North and South Arrivals (daily 9.15am–4pm).

Apps The best mobile phone app for route planning, including finding live bus times, is Citymapper (citymapper.com).

BY TUBE

Except for very short journeys, the Underground – or tube – is by far the quickest way to get about.

Tube lines Eleven different lines cross much of the metropolis, although south of the river is not very well covered. Each line has its own colour and name – all you need to know is which direction you’re travelling in (northbound, eastbound, southbound or westbound), and the final destination (plus sometimes which branch).

Services Frequent Mon–Sat 5.30am–12.30am, Sun 7.30am–11.30pm; you rarely have to wait more than 5min for a train between central stations.

Night Tube The 24hr Night Tube service runs every 10–20min on Friday and Saturday on five main lines: Central, Jubilee, Piccadilly, Victoria and Northern (Charing Cross branch), plus an East London section of the Overground.

Fares An Oyster card or contactless payment (touched in and out at the barrier at each station) is by far your best option (see box below); one-way fares with paper tickets are never the best choice – a journey in zone 1 costs £4.90 with a paper ticket, £2.40 with an Oyster or contactless card.

BY BUS

London’s red buses – most, but not all, of them, double-deckers – are fun to ride on and a cheap way of sightseeing. For example, the #11 bus from Victoria station will take you past Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall, round Trafalgar Square, along the Strand and on to St Paul’s Cathedral. You can also take an old-fashioned double-decker Routemaster, on “heritage” route #15 (daily 9.30am–6.30pm; every 20min) from Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill. At many stops you need to stick your hand out to get the bus to stop, and press the bell in order to get off.

Services Some buses run a 24hr service, but most run between about 5am and midnight, with a network of night buses (prefixed with the letter “N”) operating outside this period (every 20–30min).

Fares A one-way fare is £1.50, any time and for any distance travelled, including if you transfer to another bus within an hour (the Hopper fare). You must touch in every time you alight (though you don’t touch out); cash is not accepted – you need an Oyster card, contactless debit card or travelcard.

BY Overground and DLR

Overground The orange Overground line is a large network that connects with the tube system and stretches out to Richmond in the west, Stratford in the east, forming an orbital railway, a sort of outer Circle Line. It’s particularly useful for reaching parts of East London (every 5–15min roughly). From New Cross Gate to Dalston Junction there’s a night service (Fri & Sat), with plans to extend it to Highbury & Islington.

DLR The Docklands Light Railway is a network of driverless trains from Bank in the City, and from Tower Gateway (close to Tower Hill tube and the Tower of London) above ground to the financial centre of Docklands, plus other areas in the East End, and also below ground to Greenwich. It’s integrated with the tube; pay by Oyster.

BY TRAIN

Large areas of London’s outskirts are best reached by the suburban train network, departing from one of the main central termini; they all accept Oyster, and main routes generally run every 15–30min.

BY BOAT

Boat trips on the Thames are a fun way of sightseeing, and there are several tours and speedboats as well as Thames Clippers.

Thames Clipper Runs a regular commuter service between the London Eye and Greenwich (every 15–30min Mon–Fri 7am–10.30pm, Sat & Sun 8.30am or 9.30am–10.30pm, then one final eastbound service around 11.30pm; thamesclippers.com). There are piers on both sides of the river, including Embankment, Bankside, Blackfriars, London Bridge and Tower. You can buy tickets at a pier, but there is a discount if you buy online in advance or use an Oyster card. Typical fares are £6.30 for a central zone single with a pay-as-you-go Oyster card or online (£8.10 otherwise), with an unlimited hop-on hop-off day River Roamer costing £16.30 online, £18.50 from the pier.

BY TAXI

Black cabs Compared to most cities, London’s metered black cabs are expensive unless there are three or more of you, though black-cab drivers have unparalleled knowledge of the city’s streets. The minimum fare is £2.60, and a ride from Euston to Victoria, for example, costs around £15–20 (Mon–Fri 5am–8pm). After 8pm on weekdays and all day during the weekend, a higher tariff applies, and after 10pm it’s higher still. A yellow light over the windscreen tells you if the cab is available – just stick your arm out to hail it. To order a black cab in advance (£2 extra), phone 0871 871 8710.

Minicabs and apps Private minicabs are much cheaper than black cabs, but cannot be hailed from the street. They must be licensed and able to produce a TfL ID on demand. Apps like Hailo and Uber can come in handy, too, though at the time of going to print TfL had decided not to renew Uber's licence to operate in London; check for updates before you travel.

BY bike

Boris bikes The city’s cycle rental scheme – or Boris bikes, as they’re universally known, after former Mayor of London Boris Johnson – has over 700 docking stations across central London. With a credit or debit card, you can buy 24hr access for just £2. You then get the first 30min on a bike free, so if you hop from docking station to docking station you don’t pay another penny. Otherwise, it’s £2 for each additional 30min. For more details see tfl.gov.uk.

Bike rental London Bicycle Tour Company, 1a Gabriel Wharf on the South Bank (020 7923 6838, londonbicycle.com), has bikes for rent (£3.50–4/hr; £20–24/day).

The congestion charge

All vehicles entering central London on weekdays between 7am and 6pm are liable to a congestion charge of £11.50 per vehicle (£10.50 if you sign up online to pay automatically each time you travel in the zone; vehicles that don’t meet certain emission standards have to pay an additional £10/day emissions surcharge). Pay the charge online or over the phone (lines open Mon–Fri 8am–10pm, Sat 9am–3pm; 0343 222 2222, tfl.gov.uk), before midnight; paying the following day costs £14; 24 hours later, you’ll be liable for a £130 Penalty Charge Notice (reduced to £65 if you pay within fourteen days). Disabled travellers, motorcycles, minibuses and some alternative-fuel vehicles are exempt from the charge, but you must register in order to qualify. For more details, visit tfl.gov.uk.

Information and tours

Visit London The official tourist information body, though they don’t run any tourist offices. Check visitlondon.com for information.

City of London Information Centre The City’s central information office, situated on the south side of St Paul’s Cathedral (Mon–Sat 9.30am–5.30pm, Sun 10am–4pm; cityoflondon.gov.uk; St Paul’s); several walking tours of the City run daily from here (most £7).

London Pass and discounts The London Pass (londonpass.com) covers a hop-on hop-off bus tour, Thames river cruise and entry to around 70 of London’s top charging attractions, including Hampton Court Palace, London Zoo, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and Windsor Castle. The pass costs £62 for one day (£42 for kids), rising to £139 for six days (£96 for kids), with all-zone Oyster card options available too. Buy online or from a TfL Visitor Centre and other outlets. If you’ve travelled to London by National Rail train (not Eurostar) you can get two-for-one tickets on numerous attractions (see daysoutguide.co.uk).

Bus tours Standard sightseeing tours are run by several rival bus companies, with open-top double-deckers every 30min from Victoria station, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and other tourist spots. You can hop on and off several different routes with the Original Tour for £29 (daily 8.20am–6pm; every 15–30min; 020 8877 1722, theoriginaltour.com). Golden Tours’ (goldentours.com) bus tour is included in the London Pass.

Boat tours City Cruises run from Westminster to Greenwich (every 40min; tickets £10–16, one-day ticket included in London Pass, if bought online; 020 7928 3132, citycruises.com).

Walking tours Numerous walking tours are offered, including those departing from the City of London information centre (see above). They normally cost around £10 and take around 2hr; often you can simply show up at the starting point. Original London Walks (020 7624 3978, www.walks.com) are a well-established company.

London postcodes

A brief word on London postcodes: the name of each street is followed by a letter giving the geographical location (E for “east”, WC for “west central” and so on) and a number that specifies the postal area. However, this is not a reliable indication of the remoteness of the locale – W5, for example, lies beyond the more remote-sounding NW10 – so it’s always best to check a map before taking a room in what may sound like a fairly central area.

Accommodation

London accommodation is expensive. The hostels are among the costliest in the world, while venerable institutions such as the Ritz, the Dorchester and the Savoy charge the very top international prices – from £300 per luxurious night. For a decent hotel room, don’t expect much change out of £110 a night, and even B&Bs struggle to bring their tariffs down to £90 for a double with shared facilities. The chain hotels are a safe bet – but they’ll offer less character than the places that we’ve reviewed below and, depending on the season or location, may not always be that much cheaper. Premier Inn (premierinn.com), Travelodge (travelodge.co.uk), easyHotel (easyhotel.com) and Point A (pointahotels.com) all have properties in central locations. Whatever the time of year, you should book as early as possible if you want to stay within a couple of tube stops of the West End. Among the many price comparison sites and booking portals, londontown.com often offers good discounts.

hotels, guesthouses and B&BS

When choosing your area, bear in mind that the West End – Soho, Covent Garden, St James’s, Mayfair and Marylebone – and the western districts of Knightsbridge and Kensington are dominated by expensive, upmarket hotels; for central hotels at a good price, Bloomsbury remains a safe bet, while a number of less expensive options are popping up on the fringes. Free wi-fi is almost universally standard, and is free in all the establishments we review. While anywhere categorized as a B&B automatically includes breakfast, our reviews specify where breakfast is included in hotel rates (which is unusual) and guesthouses (which is less so).

westminster and St James’s

Artist Residence 52 Cambridge St, SW1V 4QQ 020 7828 6684, artistresidence.co.uk; Pimlico; map. Boutique guesthouse offering relaxed luxury and cool style. The ten rooms – exposed brick, bare wood, stylish prints and upcycled furnishings – feature lots of extras, but the cheapest are small. There’s a Modern British restaurant and a cocktail bar on site. £265

B&B Belgravia 64–66 Ebury St, SW1W 9QD 020 7259 8570, bb-belgravia.com; Victoria; map. Welcoming B&B near Victoria train and coach stations. The small, simple, en-suite rooms are comfortable, with some original features; those on the ground floor can get street noise. There’s a lounge with hot drinks and a guest laptop, plus a garden and bike loan. £160

Nadler Victoria 10 Palace Place, SW1E 5BW 020 3540 8800, nadlerhotels.com; Victoria; map. One of a sophisticated mini-chain – well-designed, comfortable rooms with kitchenettes, plus friendly service – very near Buckingham Palace. The cheapest rooms are small, but still prove excellent value in this part of town. Branches in Soho (see below) and Earl’s Court. £195

Sanctuary House 33 Tothill St, SW1H 9LA 020 7799 4044, sanctuaryhousehotel.co.uk; St James’s Park; map. Fuller’s Brewery runs a number of hotels in London; this one has a terrific location by St James’s Park. The 34 smart rooms, despite being above the drinking action, are quiet enough, and kitted out in an uncontroversially contemporary style. £166

Z Hotel Piccadilly 2 Orange St, WC2H 7DF 020 3551 3700, thezhotels.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. While this modern hotel is convenient for Piccadilly, it’s also a hop away from Trafalgar Square. With properties all over London, the Z chain specializes in well-designed, teeny rooms – they’re en suite, with storage space, but the cheapest don’t have windows (rooms with windows cost £15 more). Free nightly wine and cheese buffets. £164

Marylebone

22 York Street 22 York St, W1U 6PX 020 7224 2990, 22yorkstreet.co.uk; Baker Street; map. This ten-room B&B, in a family house, delivers a home from home with heart. The Georgian building is antique-bedecked, with comfortable public spaces for reading and board games. Breakfasts are communal. £150

Soho

Dean Street Townhouse 69–71 Dean St, W1D 3SE 020 7434 1775, deanstreettownhouse.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. One of a set of hotels owned by the Soho House members’ club, this 1730s beauty is in a great location. The split-level “broom cupboard” is OK for one night – after that rooms increase in size up to the relatively capacious “bigger” (£470). All are luxurious, with nice touches including home-made biscuits; many have standalone tubs. £220

Hazlitt’s 6 Frith St, W1D 3JA 020 7434 1771, hazlittshotel.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. This early eighteenth-century building, off Soho Square, is a hotel of character and charm. Creaky, crooked old stairs lead up to romantic en-suite rooms, decorated with period furniture and antique books. Continental breakfast (not included) is served in your room; there’s also a small library with real fire and honesty bar. £299

Nadler Soho 10 Carlisle St, W1D 3BR 020 3697 3697, thenadler.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. Attention to detail, lovely service and good prices for this location. The smart, modern rooms are businesslike (the cheapest are small), with a microwave, fridge, coffee machine and kettle, so you could effectively self-cater. There are (cheaper) branches in St James’s (see above) and near Earl’s Court. £209

COVENT GARDEN

The Fielding 4 Broad Court, Bow St, WC2B 5QZ 020 7836 8305, thefieldinghotel.co.uk; Covent Garden; map. In an old building (there’s no lift) on a pedestrianized court behind the Royal Opera House, this little hotel offers simple, en-suite rooms – a little tired in places, but clean, comfortable and great value for this location, with tea- and coffee-making facilities. Rates increase by £20 at the weekend. £140

Henrietta Hotel 14–15 Henrietta St, WC2E 8QH 020 3794 5313, henriettahotel.com; Covent Garden; map. Opulent boutique hotel spread across two historic townhouses, with an on-site restaurant helmed by star chef Ollie Dabbous. With a hipster-boudoir feel, the rooms include a minibar stocked with cocktails created by the mixologists at Experimental Cocktail Club. £238

Seven Dials Hotel 7 Monmouth St, WC2H 9DA 020 7240 0823, sevendialshotel.com; Covent Garden; map. Welcoming, eighteen-room guesthouse on one of Covent Garden’s nicest streets. It’s in no way fancy: the staircase is narrow and steep (no lift) and the basic en-suite rooms are very small, but all are clean and comfy, and rates include breakfast. £110

BLOOMSBURY AND KING’S CROSS

Arosfa 83 Gower St, WC1E 6HJ 020 7636 2115, arosfalondon.com; Goodge Street; map. The fifteen en-suite rooms in this popular, friendly guesthouse aren’t big, but they’re clean and comfortable. There’s a homely guest lounge/bar and a walled garden – and breakfasts (Full English and buffet) are included. £160

Great Northern Hotel King’s Cross St Pancras Station, Pancras Rd, N1C 4TB 020 3388 0800, gnhlondon.com;King’s Cross St Pancras; map. Gussied-up station hotel with a vaguely Deco feel and lots of extras –Nespresso coffee, pastries and fresh fruit offered on each floor. The boutique rooms are bijou; the smallest, called “couchettes”, evoke the romance of a train sleeper, while others are tucked beneath the eaves. £230

Megaro Hotel Belgrove St, WC1H 8AB 020 7843 2222, hotelmegaro.co.uk; King’s Cross St Pancras; map. Unfussy contemporary choice opposite the train station. The rooms – fifty or so, including family options – are relatively spacious, with good bathrooms and espresso machines. £200

Ridgemount 65–67 Gower St, WC1E 6HJ 020 7636 1141, ridgemounthotel.co.uk; Goodge Street; map. Old-fashioned, friendly and popular family-owned guesthouse, faded but clean. Around half of the 32 rooms have washbasins but share facilities, which are spotless, and are sizeable; en-suites cost about £20 more. Full breakfast included. £95

the city

Apex City of London Hotel 1 Seething Lane, EC3N 4AX 020 7702 2020, apexhotels.co.uk; Tower Hill; map. Sleek and nicely appointed modern hotel on a secluded street near the Tower of London. It’s geared towards a corporate clientele, but welcoming to all – and every guest gets a free rubber duck. Book early for the best rates. £152

The Rookery 12 Peter’s Lane, Cowcross St, EC1M 6DS 020 7336 0931, rookeryhotel.com; Farringdon; map. Rambling Georgian townhouse, all panelled walls, flagstoned floors and creaky timeworn floorboards. The rooms, some of which are a little dark, offer faded Baroque glam. There’s a comfy conservatory and an honesty bar, but breakfast, not included in the price, is served in your room. £240

Zetter Hotel 86–88 Clerkenwell Rd, EC1M 5RJ 020 7324 4567, thezetter.com; Farringdon; map. In a stylishly converted warehouse, the Zetter epitomizes good-value boutique style. Rooms are colourful and bold, with extras such as hot-water bottles and vintage paperbacks. Free bike rental. Their more expensive sister hotels Zetter Townhouse (opposite, on St John’s Square) and Zetter Townhouse Marylebone are even more whimsical. £145

east london

Ace Hotel 100 Shoreditch High St, E1 6JQ 020 7613 9800, acehotel.com/london; Liverpool Street; map. This branch of the US hipster hotel chain is a party-animal choice. Hosting exhibitions, talks, gigs and DJ nights, it also has various artisan coffee and snack bars and a Modern British restaurant, with a club in the basement and a rooftop bar. Rooms are as cool as you’d expect, all subdued dark colours, retro styling and quirky touches – deluxe options include turntables and vinyl. £219

Culpeper 40 Commercial St, E1 6LP 020 7247 5371, theculpeper.com; Aldgate East; map. Simple, artfully distressed en-suite rooms above a gastropub near Brick Lane (don’t expect peace and quiet during pub hours). There’s a plant-filled terrace on the roof, where you can sit with a drink overlooking the City, and a good hot breakfast is included. £120

The Hoxton 81 Great Eastern St, EC2A 3HU 020 7550 1000, hoxtonhotels.com; Old Street; map. “The Hox” was one of the first hotels in this nightlife neighbourhood, and despite a change in ownership it remains a stalwart, with buzzy communal areas and two hundred or so attractive rooms. Downstairs, the Hoxton Grill and the DJ bar are popular hangouts – ask for a quiet room if you value your sleep. A light breakfast is delivered to your room. £199

Qbic 42 Adler St, E1 1EE 020 3021 2644, london.qbichotels.com; Aldgate East; map. Bright, youthful hotel – the eye-popping colour blocks and kitschy photos are not for everyone. Rooms feature fab bathrooms and comfortable beds; the cheapest are very small, though, with no windows, for which you’ll pay around £15 more. Bikes for loan, free hot drinks, and a Modern British restaurant/bar hosting monthly gigs and DJ sets. £130

SOUTH BANK

Captain Bligh Guest House 100 Lambeth Rd, SE1 7PT (no phone), captainblighhouse.co.uk; Lambeth North; map. Captain Bligh’s former residence can be your home from home – a cosy Georgian building, opposite the Imperial War Museum, run by a friendly, unobtrusive couple. The five en-suite rooms each have kitchenettes stocked with simple breakfast provisions. The three-night minimum may be the only snag. No cards. £100

bankside

Citizen M Bankside 20 Lavington St, SE1 0NZ 020 3519 1680, citizenm.com; Southwark; map. One of a slick European chain that also has branches near Tower Hill and Shoreditch. The modern rooms are pod-like, but well designed, with big windows, big beds and touch-tablet controls, and the buzzy canteen/bar is handy. £160

KENSINGTON and chelsea

Aster House 3 Sumner Place, SW7 3EE 020 7581 5888, asterhouse.com; South Kensington; map. Set on a white-stuccoed South Ken street, this upmarket B&B has thirteen rooms, all en suite but of varying sizes, decorated in a chintzy, traditional style. One opens out onto the pretty back garden. A copious buffet breakfast is served in a sunny conservatory. £240

Main House 6 Colville Rd, W11 2BP 020 7221 9691, themainhouse.co.uk; Notting Hill Gate; map. Homely, and a tad bohemian, this guesthouse offers huge suites (one with two bedrooms), covering a floor each. No breakfast, but there’s a fridge for guests’ use (along with all manner of extras) and you can have tea/coffee brought to your room. Three-night minimum. £130

Nadler Kensington 25 Courtfield Gardens, SW5 OPG 020 7244 2255, thenadler.com/kensington.shtml; Earl’s Court; map. Good-value contemporary accommodation, with attention to detail but no fussy extras. The 65 rooms range from bijou singles via “luxury bunks” to deluxe; all have mini-kitchens and a choice of pillows. A good choice for families. There are two more Nadlers, in St James’s and Soho. £165

Twenty Nevern Square 20 Nevern Square, SW5 9PD 020 7565 9555, 20nevernsquare.mayflowercollection.com; Earl’s Court; map. In an area of bog-standard B&Bs, this small hotel is a more interesting alternative, strewn with Oriental and European antiques. Rooms are en suite; some, however, are teeny, and others can be noisy. Buffet breakfast included. £150

Vancouver Studios 30 Prince’s Square, W2 4NJ 020 7243 1270, vancouverstudios.co.uk; Bayswater; map. Good-value self-catering suites (some with balconies) in a grand old Victorian townhouse with maid service, a walled garden and a resident cat. Those at the back are quietest. £149

North London

Hampstead Village Guesthouse 2 Kemplay Rd, NW3 1SY 020 7435 8679, hampsteadguesthouse.com; Hampstead; map. Prettily located on a quiet residential street between Hampstead Village and the Heath, this is an unconventional guesthouse in a family home. Rooms (most en suite) are full of character, crammed with books, pictures and personal mementos. Breakfast costs £10. One-night bookings cost £5 (Mon–Fri) or £10 (Sat) more. £105

South London

Number 16 16 St Alfege Passage, SE10 9JS 020 8853 4337, st-alfeges.co.uk; Cutty Sark DLR; map. Behind Hawksmoor’s St Alfege church, this Greenwich B&B – owned by a flamboyant ex-antique dealer/actor – offers a warm welcome, offbeat flair and the feel of being in a slightly eccentric home from home. £140

Hostels

Youth Hostel Association (YHA) hostels (yha.org.uk) are generally the cleanest, most efficiently run in the capital. However, they often charge more than private hostels, and tend to get booked up months in advance. Independent hostels are cheaper and more relaxed, but can be less reliable in terms of facilities – some are noisy, not that clean, and essentially little more than places to flop after partying all night. A good website for booking independent places online is hostelworld.com/hostels/London.

YHA hostels

Central 104 Bolsover St, W1W 5NU 0345 371 9154, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-central; Great Portland Street; map. Secure, clean 300-bed hostel, in a surprisingly quiet West End location, with a kitchen, 24hr café and bar. Most dorms, and some doubles, are en-suite; others have showers next door. Dorms £35, doubles £89

Earl’s Court 38 Bolton Gardens, SW5 0AQ 0345 371 9114, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-earls-court; Earl’s Court; map. Buzzy, busy 186-bed hostel with kitchen, café, lounge and patio garden. Some doubles are en suite. Dorms £32, doubles £79

Oxford Street 14 Noel St, W1F 8GJ 0345 371 9133, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-oxford-street; Oxford Circus; map. The Soho location and modest size (around 105 beds) mean this hostel tends to be full year-round. The atmosphere can be party central, but it’s pretty family-friendly. There’s a café, kitchen, dining room and bar. No en suites. Dorms £35, doubles £85

St Pancras 79–81 Euston Rd, NW1 2QE 0345 371 9344, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-st-pancras; King’s Cross St Pancras; map. This hostel, near the train station on the busy Euston Rd, has nearly two hundred beds. Dorms and private rooms are clean, bright and double-glazed, and some are en suite. No kitchen, but there’s a café. Dorms £34, doubles £85

St Paul’s 36 Carter Lane, EC4V 5AB 0345 371 9012, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-st-pauls; St Paul’s; map. A 213-bed hostel in a grand old school building opposite St Paul’s Cathedral. Dorms sleep up to eleven; all facilities are shared, including for the private rooms. Café, but no kitchen. Dorms £30, doubles £79

Thameside 20 Salter Rd, SE16 5PR 0345 371 9756, yha.org.uk/hostel/london-thameside; Rotherhithe; map. Huge purpose-built hostel in a quiet spot near the river. A 15min walk from the tube, it often has space when more central places are full. All dorms (sleeping up to eleven) and private rooms are en suite. Self-catering is available, and there’s a simple café-bar. Dorms £25, doubles £69

Independent hostels

Clink 78 78 King’s Cross Rd, WC1X 9QG 020 7183 9400, clinkhostels.com; King’s Cross St Pancras; map. Occupying a Victorian magistrates’ court, this huge party hostel has plenty of jazzed-up period features (you can even stay in one of the tiny old prison cells). It can get noisy – and there’s a lively DJ bar – but it’s fun if you’re feeling sociable. Dorms (four to fourteen beds; some pods; some en suite) include women-only options, and there are private singles/twins (some en suite). Kitchen facilities (not for breakfast), internet lounge and travel shop, plus continental breakfast for £1. They have a smaller, quieter sister property, Clink 261, down the road. Dorms £25, twins £90

The Dictionary Hostel 10–20 Kingsland Rd, E2 8DA 020 7613 2784, thedictionaryhostel.com; Old Street; map. This is a friendly, party hostel, as you’d expect from its Shoreditch location. There’s a café, bar, kitchen and roof terrace, plus a good free breakfast. The dorms (four to sixteen beds, some women-only) and doubles (with TVs and tea- and coffee-making facilities) look good, with whitewashed walls and timber floors – most options are en suite. Dorms £22, doubles £70

Meininger 65–67 Queen’s Gate, SW7 5JS 020 3318 1407, meininger-hotels.com; Gloucester Road; map. Secure, family-friendly hostel, one of a German chain, near the South Ken museums. The 48 rooms include dorms (four to twelve beds), some en suite and some women-only, plus singles and doubles (some en suite, with TV). No kitchen, but there’s a bar/bistro, laundry and table tennis. Minimum two-night stay in summer. Dorms £27, doubles £200

Safestay Holland Park Holland Walk, W8 7QU 020 7870 9629, safestay.com; Holland Park; map. This bright hostel, within Holland Park, is a smart choice. The unisex dorms, which sleep four to 33, are clean, with good beds (with curtains and reading lights) and showers; the private twins (some en suite) have TVs. There’s a garden, lounge and pool room, a café-bar and laundry, but no self-catering. Families welcome. Dorms £23, twins £80

Eating

London is a great city for eating out. You can sample any kind of cuisine here, from Pakistani to Japanese, Modern British to fusion. And it needn’t be expensive – even in the fanciest restaurants, set menus (most often served at lunch) can be a great deal, and sharing plates can be a godsend if you want to cut costs. The city’s dynamic street food scene, meanwhile, with food trucks, carts and pop-up stalls dishing up artisan food at low prices, offers an amazing diversity. Keep track of the ever-shifting scene on kerbfood.com, streetfeastlondon.com and realfoodfestival.co.uk. Bear in mind also that many pubs serve food, from simple pub grub to haute cuisine – check out the gastropubs in our Drinking section.

Westminster

Café

Café in the Crypt St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN 020 7766 1158, stmartin-in-the-fields.org; Charing Cross; map. This handy café – below the church, in the eighteenth-century crypt – is a nice spot at which to fill up. The daily-changing selection focuses on home-made British comfort food, plus soups, salads and puds. Live jazz Wed 8pm. Mon & Tues 8am–8pm, Wed 8am–10.30pm (jazz ticket holders only after 6.30pm), Thurs–Sat 8am–9pm, Sun 11am–6pm.

Restaurant

Lorne 76 Wilton Rd, SW1V 1DE 020 3327 0210, lornerestaurant.co.uk; Victoria; map. Modern British food made with farm-fresh seasonal ingredients; the intriguing menu lists dishes such as cod with curried peas, sea herbs, mussels and onion rings. Mains from £19; one-/two-course lunch menus £15/£22. Mon 6.30–9.30pm, Tues–Sat noon–2.30pm & 6.30–9.30pm.

Mayfair and Marylebone

Cafés

Patisserie Valerie 105 Marylebone High St, W1U 4RS 020 7935 6240, patisserie-valerie.co.uk; Bond Street; map. Founded as Swiss-run Maison Sagne in the 1920s, and preserving its glorious decor, the café is now run by Soho’s fab patissiers. They do light lunches and brunch dishes (£6–14), but the plump, creamy cakes are the stars. Mon–Fri 7am–8pm, Sat 8am–8pm, Sun 8.30am–7pm.

Tibits 12–14 Heddon St, W1B 4DA 020 7758 4112, tibits.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. Rather glam veggie/vegan café (Tues is totally vegan) in a restaurant-packed lane, offering self-service salads, soups, hot dishes and desserts from around the world. Pay by weight (£2.40/100g before 6pm, £2.70 after). There’s another branch in Southwark. Mon–Wed 9am–10.30pm, Thurs & Fri 9am–midnight, Sat 11.30am–midnight, Sun 11.30am–10.30pm.

The Wolseley 160 Piccadilly, W1J 9EB 020 7499 6996, thewolseley.com; Green Park; map. The 1920s interior is a major draw at this opulent brasserie, which started its days as the showroom for Wolseley cars. The European comfort food is good, if pricey – come for a big breakfast, a bowl of chicken soup with dumplings (£8.75), a half-dozen oysters (from £17), or afternoon tea. Mon–Fri 7am–midnight, Sat 8am–midnight, Sun 8am–11pm.

Restaurants

The Providores and Tapa Room 109 Marylebone High St, W1U 4RX 020 7935 6175, theprovidores.co.uk; Baker Street; map. New Zealand chef Peter Gordon serves elegant fusion cuisine at Providores (mains from £16 at lunch; £23 at dinner) and, downstairs, anything from cheese platters to beef pesto (£5–22) at the casual Tapa Room (no reservations). Providores: Mon–Fri noon–2.45pm & 6–10pm, Sat 10am–2.30pm & 6–10pm, Sun 10am–2.30pm & 6–9.45pm; Tapa Room: Mon–Fri 8am–10.30pm, Sat 9am–3pm & 4–10.30pm, Sun 9am–3pm & 4–10pm.

Twist 42 Crawford St, W1H 1JW 020 7723 3377, twistkitchen.co.uk; Edgware Road; map. Superb, rustic-chic restaurant where the Mediterranean/Eastern/Latin American fusion tapas menu (£10–13), lists such dishes as black-ink gnocchi with langoustine cream or ricotta-stuffed courgette flowers. Charcuterie, cheeses and Josper-grilled meats are also on offer. Mon–Thurs noon–3pm & 6–11pm, Fri noon–3pm & 6–11.30pm, Sat noon–3pm & 6pm–midnight.

More than just a cuppa: afternoon tea

The capital’s most popular venues for a classic afternoon tea – sandwiches, scones and cream, cakes and tarts, and, of course, pots of leaf tea – are the top hotels and swanky department stores, though many restaurants offer their own version. Wherever you go, you should book well in advance. Most hotels will expect at least “smart casual attire”; only The Ritz insists on jacket and tie. Prices quoted here are for the standard teas; champagne teas, or more substantial high teas, are more expensive.

Berkeley Hotel Wilton Place, SW1X 7RL 020 7235 6000, the-berkeley.co.uk; Knightsbridge; map. Daily 1.30–5.30pm. £52.

Fortnum & Mason 181 Piccadilly, W1A 1ER 020 7734 8040, fortnumandmason.com; Green Park; map. Mon–Sat 11am–7pm, Sun 11.30am–6pm. £44.

The Ritz 150 Piccadilly, W1J 9BR 020 7300 2345, theritzlondon.com; Green Park; map. Daily 11.30am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm, 5.30pm & 7.30pm. £54.

Sketch 9 Conduit St, W1S 2XG 020 7659 4500, sketch.london; Oxford Circus; map. Daily noon–4.30pm. £58.

soho

Cafés

Bar Italia 22 Frith St, W1D 4RF 020 7437 4520, baritaliasoho.co.uk; Leicester Square; map. Tiny espresso bar that’s been a Soho institution since the 1950s, keeping many of its original features. Check out the Gaggia coffee machine and the iconic neon sign. Daily 7am–5am.

Bun House 24 Greek St, W1D 4DZ 020 8017 9888, bun.house; Leicester Square; map. Pretty corner spot for fresh steamed Cantonese buns (all £2.50). Most are filled with umami-packed meats, but there’s one veggie option and a couple of decadent dessert buns. Mon–Wed 11am–11pm, Thurs 11am–midnight, Fri & Sat 11am–late, Sun noon–10pm.

Fernandez & Wells 43 Lexington St, W1F 9AL 020 734 1546, fernandezandwells.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. With its hanging hams and urban-rustic ambience, this café is popular for coffee, breakfasts and cakes to take away or eat in, plus small plates/sandwiches piled high with the best Iberian ingredients. There are four more branches around Central London. Mon–Fri 7.30am–11pm, Sat 9am–11pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Maison Bertaux 28 Greek St, W1D 5DQ 020 7437 6007, maisonbertaux.com; Leicester Square; map. Open since 1871, this charming, ramshackle and très French patisserie is an unmissable Soho experience. The decor is simple, bohemian and a little dog-eared; the cakes, tarts and croissants are to die for. No cards. Mon–Sat 9am–10pm, Sun 9am–8pm.

restaurants

Andrew Edmunds 46 Lexington St, W1F 0LP 020 7437 5708, andrewedmunds.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. Romantic, though usually packed, dining room in a Regency townhouse, candlelit at night, with a neighbourhood feel and simple food – roast pigeon with Swiss chard, say, or fennel, butterbeans and roast tomato. Mains £14–25. No mobile phones. Mon–Fri noon–3.30pm & 5.30–10.45pm, Sat 12.30–3.30pm & 5.30–10.45pm, Sun 1–4pm & 6–10.30pm.

Brasserie Zédel 20 Sherwood St, W1F 7ED 020 7734 4888, brasseriezedel.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. Huge, opulent Art Deco brasserie offering French classics – onion soup, cassoulet, choucroute – in an irresistibly Gallic atmosphere. There’s a street-level café, too, which opens at 8am (Sat and Sun 9am) for coffee and patisserie. Mains from £13; all-day menus £9.75/£12.75/£19.95. Mon–Sat 11.30am–midnight, Sun 11.30am–11pm.

Kiln 58 Brewer St, W1F 9TL (no phone) kilnsoho.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. Sophisticated Thai food with twists – a dash of Myanmar here, a little Yunnan there – and amazingly fresh ingredients. Typical dishes (£6–22) on the small-plates menu include jungle curry of turbot and snake beans or five-spice duck and offal with aged soy. Reservations taken for parties of four or more only. Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm & 5–10.30pm, Sun 1–8pm.

Kricket 12 Denman St, W1D 7HH (no phone) kricket.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. Born from a pop-up, this terrific Indian place now has a permanent Soho home, all exposed pipes, bare brick and open kitchen. Mix and match creative dishes (£5.50–12) like Keralan fried chicken with curry leaf mayonnaise or smoked aubergine with sesame raita. Reservations are only accepted for groups of four or more. Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm & 5.30–10.30pm.

Mildreds 45 Lexington St, W1F 9AN 020 7494 1634, mildreds.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. This veggie restaurant, serving tasty, home-made world cuisine – Sri Lankan curries, burritos, stir-fried Asian veg, burgers – is a Soho standby. It’s petite, and can get busy, but takes no bookings. Mains £7–12. Branches in Camden and King’s Cross. Mon–Sat noon–11pm.

The Palomar 34 Rupert St, W1D 6DN 020 7439 8777, thepalomar.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. Contemporary Jerusalem food in a noisy, slick space, with counter seating around the busy kitchen and a dining room at the back. It’s a sociable sharing-plate experience, full of hefty flavours – octopus with burnt courgette, labneh and chimichurri, for example. Dishes £4–15. Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm & 5.30–11pm, Sun 12.30–3.30pm & 6–9pm.

Polpo 41 Beak St, W1F 9SB 020 7734 4479, polpo.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. The first in what has become a mini-chain, this branch of Polpo serves delicious cicheti (bar snacks) and small plates from £3 to £10 – try the crab and chilli linguine or any of the meatballs. Reservations are taken for lunch; dinner bookings are limited. The other London Polpos – in Covent Garden (two branches), Chelsea, Notting Hill and Smithfield – along with, from the same team, Polpetto on Berwick St, and Spuntino, a hip take on American diner food on Rupert St, are also recommended. Mon–Thurs 8am–11pm, Fri 8am–midnight, Sat 11.30am–midnight, Sun 11.30am–10pm.

covent garden

Cafés

Homeslice 13 Neal’s Yard, WC2H 9DP 020 3151 7488, homeslicepizza.co.uk; Covent Garden; map. Rustic-cool pizza joint offering thin-crust, wood-fired gourmet pizzas – pig cheek, collard greens and crackling, say – plus sparkling wine on tap; £4/slice (some varieties only) or £20 for a 20-inch pizza. Branches in Shoreditch and Fitzrovia. Daily noon–11pm.

Kastner and Ovens 52 Floral St, WC2E 9DA 020 7836 2700, facebook.com/kastnerandovens; Covent Garden; map. Tiny takeaway turning out home-made fresh salads and heart-warming pies, quiches, soups and hot specials, and an irresistible selection of cakes. Around £7 for three salads. Mon–Fri 8am–4pm.

Rock & Sole Plaice 47 Endell St, WC2H 9AJ 020 7836 3785, rockandsoleplaice.com; Covent Garden; map. This venerable fish-and-chip shop is an appealing, no-nonsense place, but it’s not cheap – cod and chips costs around £15. Eat in or at a pavement table, or take away. Mon–Sat 11.30am–10.30pm, Sun noon–10pm.

RESTAURANTS

Barrafina 10 Adelaide St, WC2N 4HZ (no phone) barrafina.co.uk; Charing Cross; map. This terrific tapas bar has won bucketloads of accolades for doing simple food impeccably well. It’s fairly meaty – suckling pig, braised ox tongue and herb-crusted rabbit shoulder are typical. Branches in Drury Lane and Soho. No reservations; no groups larger than four. Mon–Sat noon–3pm & 5–11pm, Sun 1–3.30pm & 5.30–10pm.

Dishoom 12 Upper St Martin’s Lane, WC2H 9FB 020 7420 9320, dishoom.com; Leicester Square; map. Re-creating the atmosphere of the Persian cafés of Old Bombay, Dishoom is buzzy and stylish but, most importantly, serves great food – don’t miss the black dhal. Mains from £6.50. Very limited reservations. Branches in Shoreditch, King’s Cross and near Carnaby Street. Mon–Thurs 8am–11pm, Fri 8am–midnight, Sat 9am–midnight, Sun 9am–11pm.

Flesh & Buns 41 Earlham St, WC2H 9LX 020 7632 9500, bonedaddies.com; Covent Garden; map. The boozy, rock’n’roll vibe at this noisy Japanese izakaya-style basement restaurant belies the quality of the food: the rice buns are the stars, served with succulent toppings (crispy duck leg £14.20; miso-grilled aubergine £9.70). Mon & Tues noon–3pm & 5–10pm, Wed–Fri noon–3pm & 5–11pm, Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–9.30pm.

bloomsbury and King’s Cross

Cafés

Bloomsbury Coffee House 20 Tavistock Place, WC1H 9RE 020 7837 2877, bloomsburycoffeehouse.co.uk; Russell Square; map. Cosy basement café, a popular student haunt, serving breakfasts, home-made savoury dishes, Allpress coffee and cakes. Mon–Fri 8am–4.30pm, Sat & Sun 8am–1.30pm.

Caravan 1 Granary Square, N1C 4AA 020 7101 7661, caravanrestaurants.co.uk; King’s Cross; map. A trailblazer on the King’s Cross dining scene, this buzzy spot, occupying a huge old grain store, serves tempting Modern European/fusion breakfasts, brunches, small plates (from £6.50), gourmet pizza (from £9) and larger mains (from £17.50) to a lively crowd. Expect to see anything from molasses-roasted beets to chaat-masala-braised oxtail. There are branches in Exmouth Market and near Bankside. Mon–Fri 8am–10.30pm, Sat 10am–10.30pm, Sun 10am–4pm.

Diwana Bhel Poori House 121–123 Drummond St, NW1 2HL 020 7387 5556, diwanabph.com; Euston; map. On a street lined with cheap Indian restaurants, this South Indian veggie diner wins for its enormous all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet (£7) – dinners are not nearly as good value. Mon–Sat noon–11.30pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

RESTAURANTS

Grain Store Granary Square, N1C 4AB 020 7324 4466, grainstore.com; King’s Cross; map. Warehouse-style restaurant with a strong focus on fresh veg; try oyster mushrooms in vegan XO sauce with wasabi pea coulis and herb tofu. Mains from £13.50; small plates (£3.50–16) served all day. Mon–Fri noon–10.30pm, Sat 10am–10.30pm, Sun 10.30am–3.30pm.

Noble Rot 51 Lamb’s Conduit St, WC1N 3NB 020 7242 8963, noblerot.co.uk/wine-bar; Russell Square; map. Superlative seasonal food served in a cosy wine bar in a lovely old townhouse. Many dishes have a European accent (Auvergne guinea fowl with sweetcorn and girolles, say). Small plates from £9; mains from £18. Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm & 6–9.30pm.

the city

Cafés

Breddos Tacos 82 Goswell Rd, EC1V 7DB 020 3535 8301, breddostacos.com; Barbican; map. High-spirited fusion taqueria, born from an East London food shack, that uses the best British produce in everything from crunchy sweetbread tacos to chanterelle mushroom tostadas. Tacos £2.50–4.50; tostadas around £7; grills £7–20. No reservations. Mon–Sat noon–3pm & 5–10.30pm.

Café Below St Mary-le-Bow Church, Cheapside, EC2V 6AU 020 7329 0789, cafebelow.co.uk; St Paul’s; map. A rare City gem: a cosy, family-owned café in a Norman church crypt, serving home-cooked bistro-style dishes with creative veggie choices and good hot breakfasts. Lunch mains from £11. Mon–Fri 7.30–10am & 11.30am–2.30pm.

Prufrock Coffee 23–25 Leather Lane, EC1N 7TE 020 7242 0467, prufrockcoffee.com; Chancery Lane; map. This pared-down shrine to the coffee bean pioneered London’s artisan coffee craze. The coffee is great, of course – and there’s a short menu of breakfast, lunch and pastries. Mon–Fri 8am–6pm,  Sat & Sun 10am–5pm.

RESTAURANTS

Duck & Waffle Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY 020 3640 7310, duckandwaffle.com; Aldgate; map. Forty floors up, this smart place offers amazing City views and hipster comfort food (the signature dish features waffles, duck confit, fried duck egg and mustard maple syrup; £17). Small plates £8–13. Daily 6am–5am.

Moro 34–36 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QE 020 7833 8336, moro.co.uk; Angel; map. This lovely, lively and warmly decorated restaurant is a place of pilgrimage for disciples of Sam and Sam Clark’s Moorish/Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cuisine. The changing menus are outstanding, especially the lamb dishes and the yoghurt cake. Mains £17.50–24; tapas (from £3.50) are served at the bar all day Mon–Sat. Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm & 5.15–10.45pm (tapas all day), Sun 12.30–3pm.

east london

Cafés

Brick Lane Beigel Bake 159 Brick Lane, E1 6SB 020 7729 0616, facebook.com/beigelbake; Shoreditch High Street; map. Fresh bagels baked on the spot in a basic, much-loved takeaway. They’re delicious, and cheap; by far the priciest is the hot salt beef (£4.10), and even smoked salmon and cream cheese is a mere £1.90. Daily 24hr.

CookDaily Shoreditch, 2–10 Bethnal Green Rd, E1 6GY 07498 563168, cookdaily.co.uk; Shoreditch High Street; map. Among many good eating options in the Boxpark shipping container complex, this cool vegan place is a massive hit for its big, flavour-packed bowls of global food (all £9), served over a half rice/half quinoa mix. Mon–Wed & Sat noon–9pm, Thurs & Fri noon–9.30pm, Sun noon–7pm.

E. Pellicci 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG 020 7739 4873, epellicci.com; Bethnal Green; map. Pellicci’s caff (open since 1900) is an iconic, family-owned and jubilantly friendly East End institution with its stunning 1940s decor intact, serving hefty fry-ups and good home-made Anglo-Italian grub. Mon–Sat 7am–4pm.

Voodoo Ray’s 95 Kingsland High St, E8 2PB 020 7249 7865, voodoorays.com; Dalston Junction; map. Grungy late-night drinking dens come and go in Dalston, but Voodoo Ray’s seems set to stay – a post-party pizza/Margarita joint where the pizzas (from £3.50/slice) are huge and the Margaritas are strong. Branches in Shoreditch, Camden and Peckham. Mon–Wed 5pm–midnight, Thurs 5pm–1am, Fri & Sat noon–3am, Sun noon–midnight.

RESTAURANTS

The Clove Club 380 Old St, EC1V 9LT 020 7729 6496, thecloveclub.com; Old Street; map. This relatively relaxed, Michelin-starred restaurant offers flawless set menus (lunch five courses, £75; dinner five/nine courses, £75/£110; veggie menus same price), listing innovative British dishes with Scottish accents – the buttermilk-fried chicken with pine salt is a hit. Small plates are served at the bar from 6pm (£5–50), and you can go a la carte at lunch (mains £18–35). Beware, though: the “ticketing” system requires you to pay in advance. Mon 6–10.30pm, Tues–Sat noon–2.15pm & 6–10.30pm.

Lahore Kebab House 2–10 Umberston St, E1 1PY 020 7481 9737, lahore-kebabhouse.com; Aldgate East; map. Legendary Pakistani kebab house. Go for the lamb cutlets and roti, and turn up hungry. BYOB. Mains £8–16. Daily noon–1am.

L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele 125 Stoke Newington Church St, N16 0UH 020 7687 0009, facebook.com/damichelelondon; Stoke Newington; map. In 2016 the best pizza restaurant in Naples (for which read the best pizza restaurant in the world) made its second home in a simple little Stoke Newington space. Just two pizzas are served: the Margherita and the Marinara (without cheese, but with lashings of garlic). In both, the smoky, blistered base perfectly balances that terrific, nuanced tomato sauce. From £8. No reservations; arrive early. Tues–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

Popolo 6 Rivington St, EC2A 3DU 020 7729 4299, popoloshoreditch.com; Old Street; map. Convivial spot dishing up gutsy Italian tapas with Spanish and Moorish influences – fresh pasta or risotto, Dorset crab and bottarga salad, labneh with deep-fried olives – around a busy open kitchen or in an upstairs dining room. Plates £4–14. No reservations. Tues & Wed noon–3pm & 5.30–10.30pm, Thurs–Sat noon–3pm & 5.30–11pm.

Som Saa 43a Commercial St, E1 6BD 020 7324 7790, somsaa.com; Aldgate East; map. The short menu of regional Thai food served in this revamped warehouse is outstanding (and spicy): try the jungle curry of guinea fowl with garlic and kajron flowers. Sharing plates £7.50–14.50 at lunch, more at dinner. Reservations only for groups larger than four. Mon 6–10.30pm, Tues–Fri noon–2.30pm & 6–10.30pm, Sat noon–3pm & 6–10.30pm.

Sông Quê 134 Kingsland Rd, E2 8DY 020 7613 3222, songque.co.uk; Hoxton; map. In a street heaving with budget Vietnamese restaurants, this basic place is a favourite for steaming phô (from £9) and spicy seafood. Mon–Fri noon–3pm & 5.30–11pm, Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

St John Bread and Wine 94–96 Commercial St, E1 6LZ 020 7251 0848, stjohngroup.uk.com/spitalfields; Liverpool Street; map. A simpler offshoot of the famed St John, serving the same superlative British food on a regularly changing menu – featuring offal, pig’s cheek and the like, but also wonderful veg and fish dishes, and simple breakfasts. Sharing plates £5–21. Mon 8–11.30am, noon–4pm & 6–10pm, Tues–Fri 8–11.30am, noon–4pm & 6–11pm, Sat 8.30am–noon, 1–4pm & 6–11pm, Sun 8.30am–noon, 1–4pm & 6–10pm.

the south bank and bankside

Cafés

Maltby Street Market Maltby St, SE1 3PA maltby.st; London Bridge; map. Within walking distance of Borough Market, this smaller foodie hotspot huddles under the railway arches south of Tower Bridge. The stalls – plus some good bars and restaurants – spread along Maltby and Druid streets (druid.st) down to the Spa Terminus (www.spa-terminus.co.uk); most action is on the Ropewalk. Sat 9am–4pm, Sun 11am–4pm.

Scooter Caffè 132 Lower Marsh, SE1 7AE 020 7620 1421, facebook.com/scootercaffe; Waterloo; map. This quirky little coffee house, filled with bric-a-brac, vintage furniture and scooter memorabilia, is a relaxed spot to drink good coffee and linger. At night it morphs into a boho bar. Mon–Thurs 8.30am–11pm, Fri 8.30am–midnight, Sat 10am–midnight, Sun 10am–11pm.

RESTAURANTS

Laughing Gravy 154 Blackfriars Rd, SE1 8EN 020 7998 1707, thelaughinggravy.co.uk; Southwark; map. There’s a cosy neighbourhood vibe at this upmarket brasserie, which serves bistro food – braised duck pappardelle; pan-fried cod; roast dinners – in a brick-walled dining room. Mains £12.50–25. Mon–Thurs noon–3pm & 5–10pm, Fri noon–3pm & 5–10.30pm, Sat noon–4pm & 5–10.30pm, Sun noon–4.30pm.

Padella 6 Southwark St, SE10 1TQ (no phone) padella.co; London Bridge; map. The open kitchen at this bright, contemporary pasta place by Borough Market turns out wonderful, authentic fresh pasta. A small plate of gnocchi with sage and butter costs just £4, while tagliarini with crab, chilli and lemon is one of the most expensive dishes at £11.50. BYOB; no reservations. Mon–Sat noon–4pm & 5–10pm, Sun noon–5pm.

kensington and chelsea

Cafés

Books for Cooks 4 Blenheim Crescent, W11 1NN 020 7221 1992, booksforcooks.com; Ladbroke Grove; map. There's a cute dining area inside this excellent cookery bookshop. Get there early to grab a seat for the three-course set lunch (£7). Tues–Sat 10am–6pm; food noon–1.30pm.

Capote y Toros 157 Old Brompton Rd, SW5 0LJ 020 7373 0567, cambiodetercio.co.uk; Gloucester Road; map. The emphasis at this tapas bar is on Spain’s sherries, with 125 on offer, along with modern tapas (£6–29). Nightly flamenco guitar. Tues–Sat 6–11.30pm.

Lisboa Patisserie 57 Golborne Rd, W10 5NR 020 8968 5242; Ladbroke Grove; map. Authentic Portuguese pastelaria, a perfect post-Portobello Rd pit stop, with coffee, croissants and the best pasteis de nata (custard tarts) this side of Lisbon. Daily 7.30am–7.30pm.

RESTAURANTS

Dinner Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA 020 7201 3833, dinnerbyheston.com; Knightsbridge; map. Though this is a Heston Blumenthal restaurant, he doesn’t actually cook here – the head chef worked with him at the Fat Duck – and there is less emphasis on flashy molecular cuisine. However, the creative food, using old English recipes, is as intriguing as you’d expect; try the salamagundy or the “meat fruit”. Mains £28–90; three-course weekday lunch menu £45. Mon–Fri noon–2pm & 6–10.15pm, Sat & Sun noon–2.30pm & 6.30–10.30pm.

Hereford Road 3 Hereford Rd, W2 4AB 020 7727 1144, herefordroad.org; Baywsater; map. The contemporary dining room, with bustling open kitchen, is a smart setting for accomplished English cooking – beetroot, sorrel and boiled egg; braised duck leg with turnips, and such like. Mains £12–16.50; two-/three-course weekday lunch menus £13.50/£15.50. Mon–Sat noon–3pm & 6–10.30pm, Sun noon–4pm & 6–10pm.

Medlar 438 Kings Rd, SW10 0LJ 020 7349 1900, medlarrestaurant.co.uk; Fulham Broadway; map. Superlative Modern European food – roast stone bass with palourde clams and pancetta, for example – served in a relaxed, elegant dining room. It’s prix fixe, and excellent value: one-/two-/three-course lunch menus £25/£30/£35, two-/three-course dinner £41/£49 (£35 on Sun). Mon–Fri noon–3pm & 6.30–10.30pm, Sat noon–3pm & 6–10.30pm, Sun noon–3pm & 6–9.30pm.

Nama 110 Talbot Rd, W11 1JR 020 7313 4638, namafoods.com; Westbourne Park; map. Creative raw vegan food with global accents – raspberry gazpacho; truffle pasta; kohlrabi ravioli – with lots of juices, smoothies and infusions. Mains £9–16.50. Tues & Wed noon–10pm, Thurs noon–11pm, Fri & Sat 9am–11pm, Sun 9am–6pm.

north london

Cafés

Brew House Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane, NW3 7JR 020 8348 4073, searcyskenwoodhouse.co.uk; Highgate; map. The food isn’t amazing – though they do a good line in cakes – but the location, in the huge, sunny garden courtyard of Kenwood House, more than compensates. Daily: spring & summer 9am–6pm; rest of year 9am–4pm.

Louis Patisserie 32 Heath St, NW3 6TE 020 7435 9908; Hampstead; map. For more than fifty years this tiny tearoom/patisserie has been serving sticky cakes, tea and coffee to a local crowd. They may now play background music, and some Hungarian specialities have dropped off the menu, but it’s still a refreshingly uncorporate choice. Daily 8am–6pm.

RESTAURANTS

Jin Kichi 73 Heath St, NW3 6UG 020 7794 6158, jinkichi.com; Hampstead; map. Book ahead for this tiny, homely and busy neighbourhood Japanese diner, which specializes in charcoal-grilled yakitori (skewers). The sushi, noodles and other Japanese staples are good, too. Skewers from £2; other dishes from £4. Tues–Sat 12.30–2.10pm & 6–11pm, Sun 12.30–2.10pm & 6–10pm.

Namaaste Kitchen 64 Parkway, NW1 7AH 020 7485 5977, namaastekitchen.co.uk; Camden Town; map. You’ll find unusual dishes, including wild rabbit achari with aubergine compote, at this superb contemporary Indian and Pakistani restaurant. Mains £12–23; one-/two-/three-course lunch menus £8.50/£10/£12.50. Mon–Thurs noon–3pm & 5.30–11.30pm, Fri & Sat noon–11.30pm, Sun noon–11pm.

south london

Restaurant

Naughty Piglets 28 Brixton Water Lane, SW2 1PE 020 7274 7796, naughtypiglets.co.uk; map. Small, convivial restaurant with a cosy local vibe, dishing up flavour-packed small plates (£7–16) – pork belly with Korean spices, say, or sardine lasagne with black olives – and “low intervention” wines. Tues & Wed 6–10pm, Thurs noon–2.30pm & 6–10pm, Fri & Sat noon–3pm & 6–10pm, Sun noon–3pm.

west london

Café

Hollyhock Terrace Gardens, Petersham Rd, TW10 6UX 020 8948 6555; Richmond; map. This laidback fairtrade vegetarian café, hidden away in Richmond’s flower-filled Terrace Gardens, is perfect for light lunches or coffee and cakes on the shady terrace overlooking the river. Daily 9am–dusk.

restaurant

Chez Lindsay 11 Hill Rise, Richmond, TW10 6UQ 020 8948 7473, chezlindsay.co.uk; Richmond; map. Small, bright, riverside Breton restaurant, serving galettes, crêpes and French mains including steak frites and oysters. Galettes from £5.25, mains £12.50–25; two-/three-course menus (Mon–Fri noon–7pm) £12.75/£15.75. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Drinking

Westminster

St Stephen’s Tavern 10 Bridge St, SW1A 2JR 020 7925 2286, ststephenstavern.co.uk; Westminster; map. Opulent Victorian pub opposite the Houses of Parliament and wall to wall with civil servants and MPs. Good real ales, plus fish and chips and pies. Mon–Sat 10am–11pm, Sun 10am–10pm.

Mayfair and marylebone

The Golden Eagle 59 Marylebone Lane, W1U 2NY 020 7935 3228; Bond Street; map. Proper old one-room neighbourhood pub – a delight in this swanky area – with a good range of real ales, and regular singalongs around the piano (Tues, Thurs & Fri). Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

The Gunmakers 33 Aybrook St, W1U 4AP 020 7487 4937, thegunmakersmarylebone.co.uk; Bond Street; map. This place is all wood panelling, Churchill memorabilia and an awful lot of framed bullets. Decent range of ales (including a few crafts), plus a brief menu of dirty burgers. Mon–Sat 10am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm; kitchen Mon–Sat noon–9pm, Sun noon–5pm.

The Windmill 6–8 Mill St, W1S 2AZ 020 7491 8050, windmillmayfair.co.uk; Oxford Circus; map. Convivial pub just off Regent St, a perfect retreat for exhausted shoppers. The Young’s beers are good, as are the award-winning pies. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm, Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Ye Grapes 16 Shepherd Market, W1J 7QQ 020 7493 4216; Green Park; map. Located in Shepherd Market, a charming corner of Mayfair, it’s the location that really makes this pub. If it’s too busy, try the King’s Arms, also in Shepherd Market. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Soho

The Blue Posts 22 Berwick St, W1F 0QA 020 7437 5008; Tottenham Court Road; map. Real old-school Soho – the “governor” wears a tie, pulls pints from a relatively small selection of ales and lagers, and offers only the finest selection of peanuts and crisps. Popular with the local media crowd. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm.

Dog & Duck 18 Bateman St, W1D 3AJ 020 7494 0697, bit.ly/DogDuck; Tottenham Court Road; map. Tiny Nicholson’s pub that retains much of its old character, beautiful Victorian tiling and mosaics, a range of real ales and a loyal clientele. If it gets too busy downstairs, head upstairs to the George Orwell Bar (he used to drink here). Daily 10am–11pm.

The French House 49 Dean St, W1D 5BG 020 7437 2799, frenchhousesoho.com; Leicester Square; map. This cosy pub has been a boho-Soho institution since Belgian Victor Berlemont bought the place shortly before World War I. Strictly no music or TV, but plenty of classic Soho barflies and no end of Free French and literary associations. Beer – lager only – famously comes by the half pint; wine and champagne a speciality. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Two Floors 3 Kingly St, W1B 5PD 020 7439 1007, twofloors.com; Oxford Circus; map. An unlikely combo: craft ales and cocktails in the pubby street-level bar and a dimly lit tiki bar in the basement – yet this place pulls it off with aplomb. Mon–Thurs noon–11pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Covent Garden and the STRAND

Cross Keys 31 Endell St, WC2H 9BA 020 7836 5185, crosskeyscoventgarden.com; Covent Garden; map. You’ll do well to find a seat in this cosy, foliage-drenched Covent Garden favourite, which is stuffed with copper pots, brass instruments, paintings and memorabilia. Most beer is from Brodie’s in Leyton. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Gordon’s 47 Villiers St, WC2N 6NE 020 7930 1408, gordonswinebar.com; Charing Cross; map. Cavernous, shabby, atmospheric old wine bar, open since 1890 and specializing in ports, sherries and Madeiras; the cheese platters are legend. It’s a favourite with local office workers, who spill outdoors in the summer. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

The Harp 47 Chandos Place, WC2N 4HS 020 7836 0291, harpcoventgarden.com; Leicester Square; map. For such a sliver of a pub, they pack in an excellent array of ales and ciders. The tiny bar is invariably packed; there’s more room in the comfortably battered upstairs. Mon–Thurs 10am–11pm, Fri & Sat 10am–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Lamb & Flag 33 Rose St, WC2E 9EB 020 7497 9504, lambandflagcoventgarden.co.uk; Leicester Square; map. More than three hundred years old, this agreeably tatty Fuller’s pub, tucked down an alley between Garrick and Floral streets, is perennially popular. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Bloomsbury and king’s cross

The Duke 7 Roger St, WC1N 2PB 020 7242 7230, dukepub.co.uk; Russell Square; map. Lovely little neighbourhood pub with an unusual, unforced Art Deco flavour and lots of interwar design details. Its discreet location keeps the crowd in the small bar manageable. Mon–Sat noon–11pm.

The Euston Tap 190 Euston Rd, NW1 2EF 020 3137 8837, eustontap.com; Euston; map. A pleasingly peculiar set-up, the Euston Tap comprises two of the station’s original entrance lodges, separated by a bus lane. A pair of taprooms are tucked within these somewhat tomb-like little spaces, serving cask and keg ales plus ciders and perries. Daily noon–11pm.

The Lamb 94 Lamb’s Conduit St, WC1N 3LZ 020 7405 0713, thelamblondon.com; Russell Square; map. Well-preserved Victorian pub with mirrors, polished wood, leather banquettes and etched-glass “snob” screens. Rather peaceful, as there’s no music or TV. Mon–Wed 11am–11pm, Thurs–Sat 11am–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Queen’s Head 66 Acton St, WC1X 9NB 020 7713 5772, queensheadlondon.com; King’s Cross; map. Attractive and laidback local offering cheese, chunky pies and charcuterie alongside craft beers and ciders. Occasional live jazz and piano. Mon & Sun noon–11pm, Tues–Sat noon–midnight.

HOLBorN

Princess Louise 208 High Holborn, WC1V 7EP 020 7405 8816, princesslouisepub.co.uk; Holborn; map. This Sam Smith’s pub features six rooms of gold-trimmed mirrors, gorgeous mosaics and fine moulded ceilings – even the toilets are listed. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm, Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Ye Olde Mitre 1 Ely Court, EC1N 6SJ 020 7405 4751, yeoldemitreholburn.co.uk; Chancery Lane; map. Hidden down a tiny alleyway off Hatton Garden, this Fuller’s pub dates back to 1546, although it was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. The low-ceilinged, wood-panelled rooms are packed with history and the ales are good. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm.

The City

The Blackfriar 174 Queen Victoria St, EC4V 4EG 020 7236 5474; Blackfriars; map. Quirky, relaxing Nicholson’s pub, with Art Nouveau marble friezes of boozy monks and a highly decorated alcove – all original, dating from 1905. Mon–Fri 10am–11pm, Sat 9am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

The Eagle 159 Farringdon Rd, EC1R 3AL 020 7837 1353, theeaglefarringdon.co.uk; Farringdon; map. The original and still arguably the best of London’s gastropubs. They offer a fairly limited selection of beers – but, wow, the food. Prepared in the tiny kitchen behind the bar, the Mediterranean-tinged dishes come out perfect time after time. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–5pm.

Jerusalem Tavern 55 Britton St, EC1M 5UQ 020 7490 4281, stpetersbrewery.co.uk; Farringdon; map. Tiny converted Georgian coffee house – the frontage dates from 1810 – with a raffish, sociable character. The excellent draught beers are from St Peter’s Brewery in Suffolk. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm.

The Lamb Tavern 10–12 Leadenhall Market, EC3V 1LR 020 7626 2454, lambtavernleadenhall.com; Monument; map. In Leadenhall Market, this historic Young’s pub is almost exclusively standing room only (both inside and out) for a suited local crowd. The basement bar, Old Tom’s, is a little more on trend, serving London beers and artisan cheese and meat platters. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm.

Three Kings 7 Clerkenwell Close, EC1R 0DY 020 7253 0483, bit.ly/ThreeKingsClerk; Farringdon; map. Perennial favourite north of Clerkenwell Green, with an eclectic interior, big windows and two small rooms upstairs perfect for lingering. Interesting craft beers and food, too. It’s next to The Crown, which is also worth a trip. Mon–Fri noon–11pm, Sat 5–11pm.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese 145 Fleet St, EC4A 2BU 020 7353 6170, bit.ly/YeOldeCheshire; Temple; map. This seventeenth-century watering hole – famous for its historic literary associations, with patrons including Dickens and Dr Johnson – is now a Sam Smith’s pub. Its dark-panelled bars and real fires make it a cosy maze, popular – some would say too popular – with tourists and locals alike. Mon–Fri 11am–11pm, Sat noon–11pm.

east london and docklands

The Carpenter’s Arms 73 Cheshire St, E2 6EG 020 7739 6342, carpentersarmsfreehouse.com; Shoreditch High Street; map. Iconic East End pub – the Kray twins bought it for their dear old mum – with an excellent range of craft lagers and ales and home-made food. A friendly, relaxed, low-lit place that feels wonderfully set apart. Mon–Wed 4–11pm, Thurs & Sun noon–11pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight.

The George Tavern 373 Commercial Rd, E1 0LA 020 7790 7335, bit.ly/GeorgeTav; Whitechapel; map. Arty, shabby, dilapidated pub, packed with history and lovely period detail. There’s a bohemian theatre space, and regular, very cool, live music. Mon–Thurs & Sun 4pm–midnight,  Fri & Sat 4pm–3am.

The Gun 27 Coldharbour, E14 9NS 020 7515 5222, thegundocklands.com; Canary Wharf DLR; map. Legendary dockers’ pub, once the haunt of Lord Nelson, The Gun is now a classy Fuller’s gastropub, with a cosy back bar and a deck offering unrivalled views. Mon–Sat 11am–midnight, Sun 11am–11pm.

Happiness Forgets 8–9 Hoxton Square, N1 6NU 020 7613 0325, happinessforgets.com; Old Street; map. Candlelit, bare-brick bar with a Hoxton-via-New York vibe, serving fashionably obscure, serious cocktails to a cool crowd. Has an excellent sister bar in Stoke Newington (originalsin.bar). Daily 5–11pm.

Sager + Wilde 193 Hackney Rd, E2 8JL 020 8127 7330, sagerandwilde.com; Hoxton; map. Gentrification doesn’t get much starker. What was formerly an England flag-draped, locals-only boozer is now this sleek wine bar that makes a lovely stop post-Columbia Road flower market. Across the road, The Marksman has won plaudits for its food. Mon–Wed 5pm–midnight, Thurs & Fri 5pm–1am, Sat noon–1am, Sun noon–midnight.

Ten Bells 84 Commercial St, E1 6LY 020 7247 7532, tenbells.com; Shoreditch High Street; map. Stripped-down pub with Jack the Ripper associations, great Victorian tiling and a hip, young crowd. Meat and cheese plates are on offer, and there’s a cocktail bar upstairs. Pub Mon–Wed noon–midnight, Thurs–Sat noon–1am, Sun 1–9pm; bar Tues & Wed 5pm–midnight, Thurs & Fri 5pm–1am, Sat 1pm–1am, Sun 1–9pm.

Town of Ramsgate 62 Wapping High St, E1W 2PN 020 7481 8000; Wapping; map. Narrow, medieval pub by Wapping Old Stairs, which once led down to Execution Dock. Captain Blood was discovered here with the Crown Jewels under his cloak. Mon–Sat noon–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

South Bank and bankside

Anchor & Hope 36 The Cut, SE1 8LP 020 7928 9898, anchorandhopepub.co.uk; Southwark; map. Superb gastropub dishing up excellent, comforting grub – slow-roasted meats, terrines, soufflés, heritage veggies and mouth-watering puds. You can’t book (except on Sun), so the bar is basically the waiting room. Mon 5–11pm, Tues–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun 12.30–3.15pm; kitchen Mon 6–10.30pm, Tues–Sat noon–2.30pm & 6–10.30pm, Sun 12.30–3.15pm.

The George 77 Borough High St, SE1 1NH 020 7407 2056, george-southwark.co.uk; Borough; map. London’s only surviving galleried coaching inn, dating from the seventeenth century and owned by the National Trust. Managed by Greene King, it serves a decent range of real ales (stick to drinks), and is usually mobbed by tourists. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Kings Arms 25 Roupell St, SE1 8TB 020 7207 0784, thekingsarmslondon.co.uk; Waterloo; map. Set on one of Waterloo’s impossibly cute terraced Georgian backstreets, this terrific local has a traditional drinking area with an excellent range of beers at the front, and a conservatory-style space with a large open fire and long wooden tables at the rear, where they also serve Thai food. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

The Roebuck 50 Great Dover St, SE1 4YG 020 7357 7324, theroebuck.net; Borough; map. Big, airy pub with distressed walls covered with colourful prints. There’s an excellent range of beers and a real mix of drinkers; the upstairs room – where Charlie Chaplin performed as a boy – hosts lively events. Above-average pub grub (£10–15) and lots of pavement seating. Mon–Thurs noon–midnight, Fri & Sat noon–1am, Sun noon–11pm; kitchen Mon–Fri noon–2pm & 5–10pm, Sat noon–4pm & 5–10pm, Sun noon–9pm.

Kensington and Chelsea

Churchill Arms 119 Kensington Church St, W8 7LN 020 7727 4242, churchillarmskensington.co.uk; Notting Hill Gate; map. Justifiably popular, flower-festooned local serving Fuller’s beers and passable Thai food in a quirky, eclectic space. Mon–Wed 11am–11pm, Thurs–Sat 11am–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Cooper’s Arms 87 Flood St, SW3 5TB 020 7376 3120, coopersarms.co.uk; Sloane Square; map. This revamped pub is bright and airy, with Mediterranean tiles behind the bar, ornithological paintings everywhere and gramophone horns for light shades. There’s a decent range of ales and ambitious pub grub. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

The Cow 89 Westbourne Park Rd, W2 5QH 020 7221 0021, thecowlondon.co.uk; Royal Oak; map. This handsome gastropub pulls in a cool, slightly raffish crowd. Tasty British food, including shellfish platters, is served both in the bar and in a more formal dining room. Mon–Thurs noon–11pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight, Sun noon–10pm (kitchen closes 3pm Sun).

The Elgin 96 Ladbroke Grove, W11 1PY 020 7229 5663, theelginnottinghill.co.uk; Ladbroke Grove; map. Enormous pub with a riot of original features and modish decorative touches. Buzzy, with regular events, from comedy and live music to life drawing. Mon–Thurs 11am–11pm, Fri & Sat 11am–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Grenadier 18 Wilton Row, SW1X 7NR 020 7235 3074, bit.ly/GrenadierSW1X; Hyde Park Corner; map. Hidden in a private mews, this charming little Greene King pub was Wellington’s local and his officers’ mess; the original pewter bar survives, and there’s plenty of military paraphernalia on display. Daily noon–11pm.

Windsor Castle 114 Campden Hill Rd, W8 7AR 020 7243 8797, thewindsorcastlekensington.co.uk; Notting Hill Gate; map. A country pub in the backstreets of one of London’s poshest neighbourhoods, this is a pretty, popular, early Victorian wood-panelled place with a great beer garden. They serve craft beers and grub with ideas above its station. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

NORTH LONDON

The Constitution 42 St Pancras Way, NW1 0QT 020 7380 0767, conincamden.com; Camden Town; map. Light seems to pour into this canal-side pub, while the beer garden overlooking the water is ideal for fine weather. Its lovely location makes it ripe for gentrification but, for now, it’s very much a locals’ haunt. Mon–Sat 11am–midnight, Sun noon–10pm.

Edinboro Castle 57 Mornington Terrace, NW1 7RU 020 7255 9651, edinborocastlepub.co.uk; Camden Town; map. The main draw at this big, high-ceilinged pub is the leafy beer garden, which hosts summer-weekend barbecues and hog roasts. Mon–Fri noon–11pm, Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

Spaniards Inn Spaniards Rd, NW3 7JJ 020 8731 8406, thespaniardshampstead.co.uk; Hampstead; map. Rambling sixteenth-century coaching inn near the Heath, once frequented by everyone from Dick Turpin to John Keats. With a garden of heath-rivalling proportions and good food, it really draws the crowds at weekends, especially Sun afternoons. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun 11am–10pm.

SOUTH LONDON

Cutty Sark Ballast Quay, off Lassell St, SE10 9PD 020 8858 3146, cuttysarkse10.co.uk; Cutty Sark DLR; map. This three-storey Georgian pub, not too touristy, is a good place for a riverside pint – food, however, is overpriced. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

WEST LONDON

The Dove 19 Upper Mall, W6 9TA 020 8748 9474, dovehammersmith.co.uk; Ravenscourt Park; map. Very old, low-beamed Fuller’s pub with literary associations, the smallest bar in the UK (4ft by 7ft), popular Sunday roasts and a riverside terrace. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm, Sun noon–10pm.

White Cross Hotel Water Lane, Richmond, TW9 1TH 020 8940 6844, thewhitecrossrichmond.com; Richmond; map. With a longer pedigree and more character than its rivals, the White Cross has a large, popular garden overlooking the river, and an open fire in winter. It’s a hub for rugby fans. Mon–Sat 10am–11pm, Sun 10am–10pm.

Notting Hill Carnival

Notting Hill’s three-day free festival (thelondonnottinghillcarnival.com), held over the August bank holiday weekend, is the longest-running street party in Europe. Dating back to1959, the Caribbean carnival is a tumult of elaborate parade floats, eye-catching costumes, chest-thumping sound systems, live bands, irresistible food and huge crowds. Bringing revellers from all over London – it can become unbelievably crowded – it is still at heart a major celebration of Notting Hill’s West Indian community, with steel bands, calypso and soca to the fore.

Nightlife

Live music

large venues

Brixton Academy 211 Stockwell Rd, SW9 9SL 020 7771 3000, o2academybrixton.co.uk; Brixton; map. The Academy has seen them all, from mods and rockers to Chase and Status. The 4900-capacity Victorian hall’s sound quality isn’t immaculate, but it remains a cracking place to see bands.

Hammersmith Apollo 45 Queen Caroline St, W6 9QH 020 8563 3800, eventimapollo.com; Hammersmith; map. The former Hammersmith Odeon is a cavernous space (downstairs can be seating or standing), hosting everyone from Sigur Ros to Regina Spektor and nostalgia acts.

Shepherd’s Bush Empire Shepherd’s Bush Green, W12 8TT 020 8354 3300, o2shepherdsbushempire.co.uk; Shepherd’s Bush; map. Great mid-league bands play here. Views from the vertigo-inducing balconies are great, but downstairs lacks atmosphere if you’re not at the front.

small and mid-sizeD venues

Borderline Orange Yard, Manette St, W1D 4JB 020 3871 7777, borderline.london; Tottenham Court Road; map. One of the last central venues still standing, with a guitar-infused music rota, some indie club nights and good sound.

Cargo 83 Rivington St, EC2A 3AY 020 7739 3440, cargo-london.com; Old Street; map. Small, popular venue in what was once a railway arch. Hosts a variety of live acts, including jazz, hip-hop, indie and folk, and excellent club nights.

The Dentist 33 Chatsworth Rd, E5 0LH (no phone) theolddentist.com; Homerton; map. Tasteful guitars, experimental music, cool crowds and a laidback atmosphere in a barely renovated old surgery that puts you and the musicians face to face.

Forum 9–17 Highgate Rd, NW5 1JY 020 7428 4080, o2forumkentishtown.co.uk; Kentish Town; map. The programming at this mid-sized venue has moved towards a reliance on nostalgia acts, but it still occasionally surprises with special events.

Green Note 106 Parkway, NW1 020 7485 9899, greennote.co.uk; Camden Town; map. Bijou music venue that punches way above its weight with its excellent line-up of roots, folk, acoustic and world music.

Hootananny 95 Effra Rd, SW2 1DF 020 7737 7273, hootanannybrixton.co.uk; Brixton; map. Charismatic world music, ska, reggae, folk and dancehall merge in this once-grand, raucous venue. Over-21s only.

Jazz Café 5 Parkway, NW1 7PG 020 7485 6834, thejazzcafelondon.com; Camden Town; map. There’s the odd cheesy pop night, but a combination of big names (at big prices) and clubbier acts from jazz, soul and beyond keep the dancefloor and balcony buzzing.

Kings Place 90 York Way, N1 9AG 020 7520 1490, kingsplace.co.uk; King’s Cross St Pancras; map. Two halls host sophisticated classical, jazz and world music gigs at this rather swish development – the acoustics are excellent.

KOKO 1a Camden High St, NW1 7JE 020 7388 3222, koko.uk.com; Mornington Crescent; map. An atmospheric Camden institution, hosting gigs and weekend club nights, with a cracking assortment of Radio 1-friendly hit-makers dominating proceedings for young crowds.

The Macbeth 70 Hoxton St, N1 6LP 020 7749 0600, themacbeth.co.uk; Old Street; map. Beautiful venue, good sound system and a great schedule, from buzzing rock and indie gigs to imaginative club nights. Try the roof terrace if you need a break from the dancefloor.

Omeara 6 O’Meara St, SE1 1TE 020 3179 2900, omearalondon.com; London Bridge; map. Fantastic under-arch venue with a lively atmosphere, high-profile DJs and cutting-edge indie acts.

Ronnie Scott’s 47 Frith St, W1D 4HT 020 7439 0747, ronniescotts.co.uk; Leicester Square; map. London’s most famous jazz club, this small, smart Soho stalwart hosts the really big names as part of its ambitious programme. The Sun jazz lunches are a hit.

Roundhouse Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8EH 0300 678 9222, roundhouse.org.uk; Chalk Farm; map. This magnificent listed Victorian steam engine shed is one of London’s premier performing arts centres, pulling in huge names like Bob Dylan and John Cale alongside more eclectic acts.

Union Chapel Compton Terrace, N1 2UN 020 7226 1686, unionchapel.org.uk; Highbury & Islington; map. Handsome, intimate venue in a beautiful old church (seating is on pews); acts range from contemporary folk via comedy to world music, r’n’b and indie legends. Free Sat lunchtime sessions.

The Vortex 11 Gillett Square, N16 8AZ 020 7254 4097, vortexjazz.co.uk; Dalston Kingsland; map. This small venue is a serious player on the contemporary jazz scene, combining a touch of urban style with a cosy, friendly atmosphere.

Clubs

Disco tunnels, sticky-floored rock clubs and epic house nights: London has it all. While the capital has lost most of its superclubs, the spread of mid-sized venues gives more choice than ever. Places tend to open between 10pm and midnight – check online. All-nighters and anywhere with a dress code will be pricey, but elsewhere £5–10 is standard, and finding a place to dance for free midweek isn’t hard (though prices at the bar may be outrageous).

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club 42–44 Pollard Row, E2 6NB 020 7739 7170, workersplaytime.net; Bethnal Green; map. Postwar kitsch sets the backdrop for some serious playtime: choose from Fifties dress-up, burlesque, disco, rock’n’roll and high-camp gay nights. Thurs–Sat 9pm–2am, check listings for other days.

Bussey Building 133 Rye Lane, SE15 4ST 020 7732 5275, clfartcafe.org; Peckham Rye; map. The very heart of Peckham’s cool scene, with three floors of mixed bills – lots of afrobeat and disco – with a friendly crowd and loads of space to dance. The fortnightly Soul Train is big fun. Usually Thurs 5pm–2.30am, Fri & Sat 5pm–6am.

Dalston Superstore 177 Kingsland High St, E8 2PB 020 7254 2273, dalstonsuperstore.com; Dalston Kingsland; map. Dalston’s nightlife hub, with picky door staff, fashionable straight/gay clientele and a hedonistic mix of disco, house and party tunes. Bar daily, club usually Wed–Sun 9pm–2.30am.

Fabric 77a Charterhouse St, EC1M 6HJ 020 7336 8898, fabriclondon.com; Farringdon; map. Despite long queues (buy tickets online) and a maze-like layout, this 1600-capacity club gets in the big names. Music booming from the devastating sound system includes drum’n’bass, techno and house. Fri 11pm–7am, Sat 11pm–8am, Sun 11pm–5.30am.

Notting Hill Arts Club 21 Notting Hill Gate, W11 3JQ 020 7460 4459, nottinghillartsclub.com; Notting Hill Gate; map. Groovy dressed-down basement club-bar playing everything from funk through to soul and guitar music. Usually Wed–Sun 7pm–2am.

Proud Camden Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AH 020 7482 3867, proudcamden.com; Camden Town; map. Crossing the dance/rock spectrum, the club nights at this former horse hospital have an enduringly student vibe. Club usually 10pm–2.30am.

XOYO 32–37 Cowper St, EC2A 4AP 020 7608 2878, xoyo.co.uk; Old Street; map. This nine-hundred-capacity venue and club has an annoying layout, with convoluted corridors, but the programming is big-time fun, often delivered by Radio 1’s roster of dance DJs. Club nights 9pm– 4am.

LGBT+ nightlife

London’s queer scene is so huge, diverse and well established that it’s easy to forget just how much – and how fast – it has grown over the last couple of decades. Soho remains its spiritual heart, with a mix of traditional gay pubs, designer café-bars and a range of gay-run services, while Vauxhall and Shoreditch/Dalston are also good stomping grounds. The major outdoor event of the year is Pride (prideinlondon.org) in late June, a colourful, whistle-blowing parade that takes over central London and features a massive rally in Trafalgar Square; the newer July event UK Black Pride (ukblackpride.org.uk) also has a large following, with a star-studded rally in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Bars and clubs

Many gay venues act as pubs by day and transform into raucous parties by night. Lots have cabaret or disco nights and are open until the early hours, making them an affordable alternative to clubs. Admission can be free or fairly cheap, though a few levy a charge after 10pm or 11pm (usually £5–10) for music, cabaret or a disco. We use “mixed” below to mean places for both gays and lesbians, though most are primarily frequented by men.

Mixed bars

Freedom 66 Wardour St, W1F OTA 020 7734 0071, freedombarsoho.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. Hip, metrosexual place, popular for cheap afterwork drinks and a fun dance spot at the weekend. Mon–Thurs 4pm–3am, Fri & Sat 2pm–3am, Sun 2–10.30pm.

Ku Bar 30 Lisle St, WC2H 7BA 020 7437 4303; 25 Frith St, W1D 5LB 020 7437 4303, ku-bar.co.uk; Leicester Square; map. The Lisle St original is one of Soho’s largest and best-loved gay bars, serving a scene-conscious yet attitude-free clientele. Ruby Tuesdays are for lesbians only. The Frith St sister bar is a calmer cocktail spot. Lisle St: Mon–Sat noon–3am, Sun noon–midnight; Frith St: Mon–Thurs noon–11.30pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight, Sun noon–10.30pm.

New Bloomsbury Set 76 Marchmont St, WC1N 1AG 020 7383 3084, newbloomsburyset.net; Russell Square; map. Hit happy hour at the right time and get cheap and cheerful cocktails in this tasteful basement bar; secure a cute and cosy snug to enjoy its speakeasy vibe. Mon–Sat 4–11.30pm, Sun 4–10.30pm.

Royal Vauxhall Tavern 372 Kennington Lane, SE11 5HY 020 7820 1222, vauxhalltavern.com; Vauxhall; map. This iconic, disreputable, divey drag and cabaret pub is home to legendary alternative club night Duckie on Sat. The rest of the week brings a changing calendar of performance that attracts a varied, often older crowd. Mon–Thurs 7pm–midnight, Fri 7pm–3am, Sat 9pm–2am, Sun 2pm–2am.

Rupert Street 50 Rupert St, W1D 6DR rupert-street.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. See and be seen at this smart, mainstream bar with a mixed after-work crowd and more of a pre-club vibe at weekends. The ideal place to start a Soho night out; happy hour lasts until 8pm. Mon–Thurs noon–11pm, Fri & Sat noon–11.45pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

Lesbian bars

She Soho 23a Old Compton St, W1D 5JL 020 7437 4303, she-soho.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. Remarkably, this is Old Compton Street’s only lesbian bar, relatively smart and with DJs at the weekend. Mon–Thurs 4–11.30pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight, Sun noon–10.30pm.

Star at Night 22 Great Chapel St, W1F 8FR 020 7494 2488, thestaratnight.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. Mixed, female-led venue, popular with a slightly older crowd who want somewhere to sit, a decent glass of wine and good conversation. Tues–Fri 4–11.30pm, Sat noon–11.30pm.

Gay men’s bars

Comptons 51–53 Old Compton St, W1D 6HN 020 7096 5470; Leicester Square; map. This large, traditional-style pub attracts a butch, cruising yet relaxed 25-plus crowd. Upstairs is more chilled and draws younger drinkers. Mon–Sat noon–11.30pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

The King’s Arms 23 Poland St, W1F 8QL 020 7734 5907, kingsarms-soho.co.uk; Oxford Circus; map. London’s best-known and perennially popular bear bar, with a traditional pub atmosphere. Sun is (raucous) karaoke night. Mon & Tues noon–11pm, Wed & Thurs noon–11.30pm, Fri & Sat noon–midnight, Sun 1–10.30pm.

Clubs

Bootylicious Club Union, 66 Albert Embankment, SE1 7TP 07973 628585, bootylicious-club.co.uk; Vauxhall; map. Despite having a large black community, London offers just one dedicated gay and lesbian urban music/BME night, held monthly and featuring r’n’b, hip-hop, dancehall, house and classic vibes. Last Sat of the month 11pm–4am.

The Eagle 349 Kennington Lane, SE11 5QY 020 7793 0903, eaglelondon.com; Vauxhall; map. Home to the excellent Sunday-night Horse Meat Disco, this club’s vibe is a loose, friendly re-creation of late 1970s New York, complete with facial hair, checked shirts and a pool table. Mon–Wed 4pm–midnight, Thurs 4pm–2am, Fri 4pm–4am, Sat 9pm–4am, Sun 8pm–3am.

Fire South Lambeth Rd, SW8 1RT 020 3242 0040, firelondon.net; Vauxhall; map. London’s superclub of choice for disco bunnies and hardboyz, with all-nighters – and often all-dayers if you’re making a proper weekend of it. Fri, Sat & occasionally Sun from 10pm or 11pm.

The Glory 281 Kingsland Rd, E2 8AS theglory.co; Haggerston; map. Drag legend Jonny Woo’s meld of lip-syncingly excellent performance, booze and a basement club for disco queens. Days and hours vary.

Heaven Villiers St, WC2N 6NG 020 7930 2020, heavennightclub-london.com; Charing Cross; map. Said to be the UK’s most popular gay club, this two thousand-capacity venue is home to G-A-Y (Thurs–Sat), with big-name DJs and PAs – expect lots of Drag Race rejects – and Popcorn Monday, which prolongs the weekday fun till 5.30am. Thurs–Sat & Mon hours vary.

Vogue Fabrics 66 Stoke Newington Rd, N16 7XB (no phone) vfdalston.com; map. Dalston’s favourite disco basement offers an array of arts events and disco fun for a fashion crowd. Highlights include genderqueer performance night Icy Gays and the mega all-nighter Anal House Meltdown. Days and hours vary.

Theatre and comedy

London has enjoyed a reputation for quality theatre since the time of Shakespeare and, along with huge popular hits, still provides platforms for innovation and new writing. The West End is the heart of “Theatreland”, with Shaftesbury Avenue its main drag, but the term is more conceptual than geographical. Less mainstream work is performed in Off-West End theatres and fringe venues, where ticket prices are lower and quality more variable. The capital’s comedy scene is lively, too, whether you want to keep things low-key in an intimate pub or pay top dollar for big-name shows.

information and costs

Websites Good starting points for comedy gigs include rabbitrabbitcomedy.com, alwaysbecomedy.com, amusedmoose.com and laughoutlondoncomedyclub.co.uk. Consult Time Out for weekly, citywide listings (timeout.com/london/comedy). For details and news about West End shows, along with tickets and promotions, see officiallondontheatre.co.uk and londontheatre.co.uk. And for weekly listings for theatre of all stripes, check Time Out (timeout.com/london/theatre).

Prices Most comedy shows cost around £5–15, but there’s plenty of free comedy to be found – often upstairs at pubs. Tickets for O2 and Wembley Arena tours cost anything from £35 up to £125 and beyond. For West End shows the box-office average is around £25–40, with £50–110 the usual top price, but bargains can be found. If you want to buy from the theatre direct it’s best to go to the box office; you’ll probably be charged a fee for booking over the phone or online. Ticket agencies such as Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.co.uk) get seats for West End shows well in advance, but can add hefty booking fees.

Discounts Whatever you do, avoid the touts and the ticket agencies that abound in the West End – there’s no guarantee that they are genuine. The Society of London Theatre (officiallondontheatre.co.uk) offers online discounts on West End shows; their booth in Leicester Square, “tkts” (Mon–Sat 10am–7pm, Sun 11am–4.30pm; tkts.co.uk), sells on-the-day tickets for the big shows at discounts of up to fifty percent. These tend to be in the top end of the price range and are limited to four/person; there’s a service charge of £3/ticket. Cheap standby, “first look” and standing tickets can be very good value, and some major theatres sell a few on the door on the day; check the venue’s website, and be prepared to put up with a restricted view.

theatres

Almeida Almeida St, N1 1TA 020 7359 4404, almeida.co.uk; Highbury & Islington; map. Popular little Islington venue that premieres excellent new plays and excitingly reworked classics from around the world. It often attracts big names, including Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Whishaw.

Arcola 24 Ashwin St, E8 3DL 020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com; Dalston Junction; map. Exciting fringe theatre in an old Dalston factory and a tent space. Politically charged plays – classics and contemporary – with shows from young, international companies and cabaret in the tent.

Barbican Silk St, EC2Y 8DS 020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk; Barbican; map. Theatre, dance and performance by leading international companies and emerging artists, with excellent post-show talks.

The Bridge Theatre 1 Tower Bridge, SE1 2SD 0333 320 0052, bridgetheatre.co.uk; London Bridge; map. Major new venue masterminded by Nicholas Hytner, formerly director at the National. The innovative performance space can be moulded to suit the performance.

Donmar Warehouse 41 Earlham St, WC2H 9LX 0844 871 7624, donmarwarehouse.com; Covent Garden; map. Long home to excellent writing, the Donmar has also garnered attention with big-name performers.

Menier Chocolate Factory 53 Southwark St, SE1 1RU 020 7378 1713, menierchocolatefactory.com; London Bridge; map. Great name, great venue, with a decent bar; the restaurant’s food is inconsistent. Plays tend towards showy casting but interesting works do appear here.

National Theatre South Bank, SE1 9PX 020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk; Waterloo; map. The country’s top actors and directors produce an ambitious programme in the three NT theatres: the raked, 1150-seat Olivier, the classic “proscenium” Lyttelton and the experimental Dorfman. Cheap deals are available; on “Travelex” performances seats can cost just £15. Some shows sell out months in advance, but £15/£18 day tickets go on sale on the morning of each performance – get there early (two tickets/person).

Open Air Theatre Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, NW1 4NU 0844 826 4242, openairtheatre.com; Baker Street; map. Lovely alfresco space in Regent’s Park hosting a tourist-friendly summer programme of Shakespeare, musicals, plays and concerts, many of which are geared towards children.

Roundhouse Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8EH 0300 678 9222, roundhouse.org.uk; Chalk Farm; map. Camden’s most exciting cultural venue, in an old – round – engine repairs shed, the Roundhouse puts on cutting-edge theatre, circus, cabaret and spoken word.

Royal Court Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS 020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com; Sloane Square; map. The Royal Court’s programme includes arguably the most ambitious and radical new writing in town; £12 tickets on Mon.

Shakespeare’s Globe 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT 020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com; London Bridge; map. This open-roofed replica Elizabethan theatre stages superb Shakespearean shows as they were originally conceived, as well as works from the Bard’s contemporaries and new writing. Seats £20–45, with seven hundred standing tickets for around a fiver. The Globe Theatre season runs April–Oct, but the site’s indoor Jacobean theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, hosts a candlelit winter theatre season Oct–April, plus concerts and events in summer.

Soho Theatre 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE 020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com; Tottenham Court Road; map. Great central theatre featuring new writing from around the globe at affordable prices. It’s renowned for its comedy and cabaret, too, and has a popular, starry bar.

Cinema

There are a lot of cinemas in London, especially the West End, with the biggest on and around Leicester Square. A few classy independent chains show more offbeat screenings, in various locations – check the Picturehouse (picturehouses.co.uk), Curzon (curzoncinemas.com) and Everyman (everymancinema.com). Tickets at the major screens cost at least £13, although concessions are offered for some shows at virtually all cinemas, usually off-peak.

BFI Southbank Belvedere Rd, South Bank, SE1 8XT 020 7928 3232, bfi.org.uk; Waterloo; map. Eclectic themed seasons, showing between seven and fourteen films daily on four screens. The BFI, in association with Odeon, also runs the nearby IMAX (0330 333 7878, bfi.org.uk/imax), a huge glazed drum where the colossal screen is not recommended for anyone with vertigo.

Electric 191 Portobello Rd, W11 2ED 020 7908 9696, electriccinema.co.uk; Notting Hill Gate; map. The Notting Hill Electric – quirky mainstream hits and offbeat offerings – is one of the oldest cinemas in the country (opened 1911). Its current, luxurious incarnation even includes a few double beds. There’s a second branch in Shoreditch.

ICA Cinema Nash House, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647, ica.org.uk; Charing Cross; map. Shows avant-garde, world, underground movies and docs on two screens in the seriously hip HQ of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, some with talks. There’s a bar, too.

Prince Charles 7 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BY 020 7494 3654, princecharlescinema.com; Leicester Square; map. Two screens in the heart of the West End, with great prices (from £8.50) and a daily changing, lively programme of newish movies, classics and cult favourites, plus all-nighters and sing-a-long romps.

Classical music

On most days you should be able to attend a classical concert in London for around £15 (the usual range is about £12–50). During the week there are also numerous free concerts, often at lunchtimes, in London’s churches or given by the city’s two leading conservatoires, the Royal College of Music (rcm.ac.uk) and Royal Academy of Music (ram.ac.uk).

Barbican Silk St, EC2Y 8DS 020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk; Barbican; map. With the outstanding resident London Symphony Orchestra (lso.co.uk) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (bbc.co.uk/symphonyorchestra) as associate orchestra, plus top foreign orchestras and big-name soloists in regular attendance, the Barbican is an excellent venue for classical music.

Kings Place 90 York Way, N1 9AG 020 7520 1490, kingsplace.co.uk; King’s Cross St Pancras; map. Modern, purpose-built venue, by the canal behind King’s Cross, featuring new and interesting work in its two performance spaces.

Southbank Centre Belvedere Rd, South Bank, SE1 8XX 020 7960 4200, southbankcentre.co.uk; Embankment; map. Three spaces: the 2500-seat Royal Festival Hall (RFH), home to the Philharmonia (philharmonia.co.uk) and the London Philharmonic (lpo.co.uk), is tailor-made for large-scale choral and orchestral works, while the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) and intimate Purcell Room are used for chamber concerts, solo recitals, opera and choirs.

Wigmore Hall 36 Wigmore St, W1U 2BP 020 7935 2141, wigmore-hall.org.uk; Bond Street; map. With its near-perfect acoustics, the Wigmore Hall – built in 1901 as a hall for the adjacent Bechstein piano showroom – is a favourite, so book well in advance. It’s brilliant for piano recitals, early music and chamber music, but best known for its song recitals by some of the world’s greatest vocalists.

The Proms

The Proms (Royal Albert Hall; 0845 401 5040, bbc.co.uk/proms; South Kensington) provide a summer-season feast of classical music, much of it at bargain prices; uniquely, there are up to 1350 standing places available each evening, which cost just £6, even on the famed last night. They’re sold from 9am each day; a few are available online but most are at the door. Promming passes, which guarantee you entrance up to thirty minutes before a show, cost from £11 (for two proms) up to £240 (for the entire season). Seated tickets are £7.50–100; those for the last night, which start at £62, are largely allocated by ballot. While the magnificence of the Royal Albert Hall is undeniable, the acoustics aren’t the best – OK for orchestral blockbusters, less so for small-scale pieces – but the performers are outstanding, the atmosphere is uplifting and the hall is so vast that everyone has a good chance of getting in.

Opera

In addition to the major venues below, a number of fringe companies, including Size Zero (sizezeroopera.com), Erratica (erratica.org), Diva Opera (divaopera.com) and Opera Up Close (operaupclose.com), produce consistently interesting work.

English National Opera London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4ES 020 7845 9300, eno.org; Leicester Square; map. The ENO is committed to keeping opera accessible, with operas sung in English, an adventurous repertoire, dazzling new productions, non-prohibitive pricing (£12–150) and various discount options.

Royal Opera House Bow St, WC2E 9DD 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk; Covent Garden; map. The ROH, one of the world’s leading opera houses, puts on lavish productions, performed in the original language with surtitles. Most tickets are more than £40 (reaching as high as £270), though there is some restricted-view seating (or standing room), which isn’t at all bad, from around £10, and various special offers.

Dance

London’s biggest dance festival is Dance Umbrella (Oct; danceumbrella.co.uk), a season of new work. For a roundup of all the major dance events, check londondance.com.

The Place 17 Duke’s Rd, WC1H 9PY 020 7121 1100, theplace.org.uk; Euston; map. The Place, home to a conservatoire and a touring company, presents the work of contemporary choreographers and student performers.

Royal Opera House Bow St, WC2E 9DD 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk; Covent Garden; map. Based at the Opera House, the world-renowned Royal Ballet puts on the very best in classical dance; tickets (£10–150) may be slightly cheaper than for opera. Book early.

Sadler’s Wells Rosebery Ave, EC1R 4TN 020 7863 8000, sadlerswells.com; Angel; map. With resident dance companies including Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and the ZooNation hip-hop outfit, Sadler’s Wells also hosts many international troupes and celebrates everything from flamenco to Bollywood. The Lilian Baylis Theatre, around the back, stages smaller productions, while the Peacock Theatre in Holborn adds populist shows to the mix.

Shopping

department stores

Fortnum & Mason 181 Piccadilly, W1A 1ER 020 7734 8040, fortnumandmason.com; Piccadilly Circus; map. Beautiful 300-year-old store that started out as a humble grocer. It’s famous for its pricey food, luxury hampers and fancy afternoon teas, but is also good for designer clothes, furniture, luggage and stationery. Mon–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Harrods 87–135 Brompton Rd, SW1X 7XL 020 7730 1234, harrods.com; Knightsbridge; map. Vast, expensive and a little stuffy, Harrods is most notable for its Art Nouveau tiled food hall – and of course, its memorial statue of Princess Diana and Dodi, erected by Mohamed Al-Fayed, the store’s previous owner and Dodi’s father. Mon–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Harvey Nichols 109–125 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7RJ 020 7235 5000, harveynichols.com; Knightsbridge; map. Absolutely fabulous, sweetie, “Harvey Nicks” has eight floors of designer collections and casual wear, with a renowned cosmetics department and luxury food hall. Mon–Sat 10am–8pm (July & Aug closes 9pm), Sun noon–6pm.

John Lewis 300 Oxford St, W1C 1DX 020 7629 7711, johnlewis.co.uk; Oxford Circus; map. “Never knowingly undersold”, this much-loved institution can’t be beaten for basics. Mon–Wed, Fri & Sat 9.30am–8pm, Thurs 9.30am–9pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Liberty 210–220 Regent St, W1B 5AH 020 7734 1234, liberty.co.uk; Oxford Circus; map. A glorious emporium of luxury infused with a dash of Art Nouveau bohemia, this exquisite store, with its mock-Tudor exterior, is most famous for its fabrics, designer goods and accessories, but also has an excellent reputation for mainstream and high fashion. Mon–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Selfridges 400 Oxford St, W1A 1AB 0800 123 400, selfridges.com; Bond Street; map. This huge, airy palace of clothes, food and furnishings was London’s first great department store and remains its best. The food hall is the finest in town. Mon–Sat 9.30am–10pm, Sun noon–6pm.

books

Daunt Books 83 Marylebone High St, W1U 4QW 020 7224 2295, dauntbooks.co.uk; Baker Street; map. Inspirational range of travel writing, guidebooks, maps, literary fiction and more, in the galleried interior of this famous Edwardian store. Other branches. Mon–Sat 9am–7.30pm, Sun 11am–6pm.

Foyles 107 Charing Cross Rd, WC2H 0DT 020 7437 5660, foyles.co.uk; Tottenham Court Road; map. It may have moved down the road, but this huge and famous store continues to offer a splendid selection of titles – including antiquarian books – on all subjects across its four miles of shelves. Smaller branches under the RFH on the South Bank and in Waterloo Station. Mon–Sat 9.30am–9pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Hatchards 187 Piccadilly, W1J 9LE 020 7439 9921, hatchards.co.uk; Piccadilly Circus; map. A little overshadowed by the colossal Waterstones down the road, and actually part of the Waterstones group, the venerable Hatchards holds its own when it comes to quality fiction, biography, history and travel. Mon–Sat 9.30am–8pm, Sun noon–6.30pm.

London Review Bookshop 14 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL 020 7269 9030, lrbshop.co.uk; Tottenham Court Road; map. All the books reviewed in the august literary journal and many more are available in this excellent Bloomsbury store. Nice little coffee (and cake) shop, too. Mon–Sat 10am–6.30pm, Sun noon–6pm.

Persephone Books 59 Lamb’s Conduit St, WC1N 3NB 020 7242 9292, persephonebooks.co.uk; Russell Square; map. Lovely bookshop offspring of a publishing house that specializes in neglected early and mid-twentieth-century writing, mainly by women. Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm.

Music

Gramex 104 Lower Marsh, SE1 7AB 020 7401 3830, gramex.co.uk; Waterloo; map. A splendid find for classical music and jazz fans, this friendly, eccentric store – “it might not be good, but it’s rare!” – is a treasure-trove of new and secondhand CDs, LPs and 78s. Mon–Sat 11am–6.30pm.

Honest Jon’s 278 Portobello Rd, W10 5TE 020 8969 9822, honestjons.com; Ladbroke Grove; map. West London stalwart offering a choice selection of reggae, blues, soul, jazz, funk, R&B, rare groove, world music and more, with current releases, secondhand finds and reissues. Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 11am–5pm.

Rough Trade 130 Talbot Rd, W11 1JA 020 7229 8541, Ladbroke Grove; roughtrade.com; map. This historic indie specialist has a dizzying array – not all of it obscure – from electronica to hardcore and beyond. A second branch, in East London’s Truman Brewery, hosts big-ticket live bands. Mon–Sat 10am–6.30pm, Sun 11am–5pm.

Markets

Borough 8 Southwark St, SE1 1TL 020 7407 1002, boroughmarket.org.uk; London Bridge; map. Gourmet suppliers from all over the UK converge to sell organic and artisan goodies from around the world at this bustling, historic and utterly enjoyable food market, while street trucks and restaurants do a roaring trade. Mon & Tues 10am–5pm (some stalls only), Wed & Thurs 10am–5pm, Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 8am–5pm, sometimes Sun 10am–4pm.

Brick Lane Brick Lane, E1 6QL visitbricklane.org, trumanbrewery.com/cgi-bin/markets.pl; Shoreditch High Street; map. Sprawling and frenzied, the famous East End market, spreading through Dray Walk, Cygnet and Sclater streets, has become a must-do for hipsters and tourists both – it’s hard to say what you can’t find here. The coolest gear is sold in and around the Old Truman Brewery (with various markets open Thurs–Sun). Sun 10am–5pm.

Camden Camden High St to Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 camdenmarket.com; Camden Town; map. Once beloved of hippies, punks and goths, and still a firm favourite with young European tourists, this huge, sprawling mass of stalls, including excellent vintage/antique stuff, segues into one enormous shopping district. Daily, roughly 10am–7pm, with more stalls at the weekend.

Columbia Road Columbia Rd, E2 columbiaroad.info; Hoxton; map. This pretty East End street spills over in a profusion of blooms and resounds with the bellows of Cockney barrow boys during its glorious market. Come late for the best bargains, or early to enjoy a coffee and brunch in one of the groovy local cafés. It’s an excellent shopping area, abounding in indie, arty and vintage stores. Sun 8am–3pm.

Greenwich Greenwich Church St, SE10 9HZ greenwichmarketlondon.com; Cutty Sark DLR; map. Sprawling set of covered flea markets selling everything from bric-a-brac to board games, with antiques and crafts, food and vintage clothes. The surrounding streets, and the shops inside the market, offer more treasures. Daily 10am–5.30pm.

Portobello Portobello and Golborne rds, W10 and W11 shopportobello.co.uk; Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill Gate; map. Probably the best way to approach this enormous market, or rather markets – beloved of tourist crowds – is from the Notting Hill end, winding your way through the antiques (Fri & Sat) and bric-a-brac down to the fruit and veg, and then via the fashion stalls under the Westway to the vintage (Fri & Sun) and fashion scene (Sat) at Portobello Green (portobellofashionmarket.com). The Golborne Rd market is cheaper and less crowded, with antique and retro furniture on Fri and Sat (food Mon–Thurs). Roughly 8am–6pm, till 1pm on Thurs; Golborne Rd closed Sun.

Spitalfields Commercial St, between Brushfield and Lamb sts, E1 6AA spitalfields.co.uk; Liverpool Street; map. The East End’s Victorian fruit and veg hall feels more like an upmarket mall nowadays, but there are interesting things to be found among its crafts, gifts and clothes stalls. Plenty of bars and restaurants, too, plus independent shops and street food. Mon–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 11am–5pm, Sun 9am–5pm.

The Making of Harry Potter

Kids and Harry Potter fans will love The Making of Harry Potter tour in the Warner Bros studios in Leavesden (20 miles northwest of London); but impressively, they’ve managed to keep it interesting for everyone else, too. The self-guided tour (typically Mon–Fri 8.30/10.30am–6/10pm, Sat & Sun 8.30am–10pm; closed late Jan to early Feb, mid-Nov & around Christmas; last tour 3–4hr before closing; check website for latest hours and tour times; £39, under-16s £31; book far in advance; 0345 084 0900, wbstudiotour.co.uk) takes you around the studios where much of the footage for the eight Harry Potter movies was shot, and every space is crammed with paraphernalia from filming. You can geek out over individual characters’ wands and original costumes, or marvel at the films’ creature technology – like the animatronic spiders – and the hand-drawn, hyper-detailed architectural plans.

Allow a few hours to get the most out of the tour and avoid rushing at the end – they save the best for last. If you can, time your visit to coincide with one of the seasonal events; these include Dark Arts at the end of October, and Hogwarts in the Snow, when the sets are decked out with fake snow and Christmas trees.

To get to the studios, take the train to Watford Junction from Euston (around 8/hr; 15–45min), then shuttle bus (around every 30min; 15min; £2.50, cash only).