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Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.
The People's Palace of 1873, burned down sixteen days after it opened and rebuilt in two years, still seven acres of glass and brick on its hill above north London.
Victorian & EdwardianYou can go insideFree
Also in Science & Engineering.
It opened on 24 May 1873 as a northern answer to the Crystal Palace, and on 9 June it burned to the ground; John Johnson rebuilt it in two years and it reopened on 1 May 1875 with a Great Hall for twelve thousand people, one of the largest organs Henry Willis ever built, a theatre, a concert room, a palm court and a racecourse below. It has never quite paid its way and never quite gone under: a charitable trust has run it for Londoners since 1900, the BBC put television on from its east wing in 1936, another fire took the Great Hall in 1980, and the theatre, dark for eighty years with its Victorian stage machinery intact, reopened in 2018 with its decay left showing. The terrace looks over the whole of London to the Downs, there is an ice rink inside, and the park drops away beneath the transmitter mast that still carries the name.
Studio tours on occasional dates; the palace, park and terrace are open daily
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.