{"category":{"slug":"see-first","name":"30 Things to See First","blurb":"Thirty places to see first, in order, for somebody who has never been to London. Each says what it is, whether it is free, whether you must book, and whether the queue is worth it.","all":"All thirty","see_also":null,"reading":null,"unit":["place","places"],"sort":"rank"},"filters":[],"venue_events":false,"river":{"line":[[51.43061,-0.51115],[51.42936,-0.51025],[51.42839,-0.50996],[51.42646,-0.50967],[51.42507,-0.50974],[51.42386,-0.50994],[51.42238,-0.51064],[51.42021,-0.51233],[51.4189,-0.51293],[51.4175,-0.51277],[51.41723,-0.51237],[51.41691,-0.51143],[51.41697,-0.51014],[51.4174,-0.50815],[51.4174,-0.50712],[51.41724,-0.50615],[51.41654,-0.50414],[51.41548,-0.50215],[51.41468,-0.50165],[51.41413,-0.50173],[51.41398,-0.50157],[51.41365,-0.50057],[51.41328,-0.50082],[51.41288,-0.50081],[51.41133,-0.50012],[51.4108,-0.50048],[51.41065,-0.50091],[51.41068,-0.50248],[51.4108,-0.50326],[51.41104,-0.50372],[51.4114,-0.50376],[51.41202,-0.5034],[51.41334,-0.50216],[51.41413,-0.50173],[51.41408,-0.49813],[51.41548,-0.50215],[51.41468,-0.50165],[51.41439,-0.50097],[51.41414,-0.49996],[51.41408,-0.49813],[51.41362,-0.49634],[51.41283,-0.4944],[51.41202,-0.49333],[51.41084,-0.49269],[51.40991,-0.49251],[51.40723,-0.49309],[51.40538,-0.49297],[51.40406,-0.49169],[51.40325,-0.49119],[51.40232,-0.49121],[51.40047,-0.49197],[51.39968,-0.49185],[51.39921,-0.49163],[51.39874,-0.4911],[51.39676,-0.48788],[51.39553,-0.48691],[51.39456,-0.48658],[51.39255,-0.48653],[51.39034,-0.48603],[51.38958,-0.48629],[51.39178,-0.48706],[51.39216,-0.48695],[51.39255,-0.48653],[51.38958,-0.48629],[51.38862,-0.48641],[51.38774,-0.48582],[51.38707,-0.48512],[51.38671,-0.48443],[51.38649,-0.48321],[51.38664,-0.48223],[51.38709,-0.48133],[51.3879,-0.48032],[51.38981,-0.47903],[51.39009,-0.47869],[51.39038,-0.47776],[51.39012,-0.4765],[51.38765,-0.47228],[51.38637,-0.47059],[51.38588,-0.47016],[51.38495,-0.46985],[51.38268,-0.47104],[51.38207,-0.47063],[51.38189,-0.46997],[51.38189,-0.46831],[51.38285,-0.46551],[51.38298,-0.4645],[51.38264,-0.46298],[51.38182,-0.46135],[51.38133,-0.46135],[51.38041,-0.46183],[51.38003,-0.46224],[51.37975,-0.46292],[51.37915,-0.4635],[51.37867,-0.4634],[51.37846,-0.46292],[51.37842,-0.46206],[51.37859,-0.46148],[51.37933,-0.46075],[51.38057,-0.45801],[51.38114,-0.45741],[51.38057,-0.45801],[51.38272,-0.4522],[51.38261,-0.45231],[51.38254,-0.45302],[51.38263,-0.45537],[51.38248,-0.4565],[51.38114,-0.45741],[51.38095,-0.45811],[51.38094,-0.45908],[51.38108,-0.45972],[51.38191,-0.4614],[51.382,-0.45911],[51.38248,-0.4565],[51.38258,-0.45608],[51.38324,-0.45497],[51.38314,-0.45334],[51.38272,-0.4522],[51.38271,-0.45186],[51.38328,-0.45094],[51.3841,-0.45032],[51.38488,-0.45022],[51.3856,-0.45058],[51.3868,-0.45198],[51.38724,-0.45214],[51.3876,-0.45196],[51.38788,-0.45119],[51.38795,-0.45021],[51.38779,-0.44962],[51.38708,-0.44832],[51.38674,-0.44656],[51.38684,-0.44532],[51.38721,-0.44415],[51.38755,-0.44378],[51.38785,-0.44361],[51.38897,-0.4436],[51.38969,-0.44296],[51.3898,-0.44268],[51.38972,-0.44175],[51.38948,-0.44121],[51.38785,-0.43909],[51.38668,-0.43813],[51.38565,-0.43779],[51.3847,-0.43692],[51.38441,-0.43631],[51.38424,-0.43504],[51.38429,-0.43419],[51.38461,-0.43304],[51.38543,-0.43218],[51.38739,-0.43123],[51.38788,-0.43055],[51.38833,-0.4292],[51.3884,-0.42657],[51.38867,-0.42579],[51.39044,-0.42312],[51.39202,-0.42124],[51.39313,-0.4202],[51.39408,-0.41892],[51.39512,-0.41791],[51.39662,-0.41733],[51.39965,-0.41392],[51.4012,-0.41244],[51.40412,-0.40834],[51.40481,-0.40716],[51.40518,-0.40564],[51.40528,-0.40585],[51.40506,-0.40679],[51.40481,-0.40716],[51.40537,-0.40658],[51.40579,-0.40528],[51.40533,-0.40556],[51.40528,-0.40585],[51.4053,-0.40513],[51.40579,-0.40392],[51.40624,-0.40168],[51.40794,-0.3972],[51.40965,-0.39126],[51.40912,-0.38555],[51.40801,-0.38121],[51.40783,-0.37945],[51.40789,-0.37812],[51.40826,-0.37639],[51.4086,-0.37317],[51.41113,-0.3665],[51.4108,-0.37075],[51.41009,-0.37347],[51.40829,-0.37615],[51.41166,-0.36442],[51.41191,-0.36312],[51.41204,-0.36126],[51.41204,-0.36001],[51.41188,-0.35907],[51.41075,-0.35538],[51.40981,-0.35513],[51.40761,-0.3507],[51.40701,-0.34996],[51.40603,-0.3482],[51.40588,-0.3471],[51.40398,-0.34381],[51.40341,-0.34143],[51.40309,-0.34066],[51.40174,-0.33897],[51.40031,-0.33793],[51.39949,-0.33709],[51.39592,-0.33229],[51.39409,-0.33081],[51.39231,-0.32869],[51.39177,-0.32769],[51.39162,-0.32708],[51.39143,-0.32569],[51.3915,-0.32461],[51.39259,-0.31986],[51.39332,-0.31829],[51.39706,-0.31295],[51.39757,-0.31242],[51.39848,-0.31191],[51.40015,-0.30952],[51.40125,-0.30899],[51.40282,-0.30869],[51.40423,-0.30871],[51.40579,-0.30901],[51.40917,-0.30907],[51.41259,-0.30842],[51.41462,-0.30844],[51.41727,-0.30755],[51.41887,-0.30665],[51.41937,-0.30675],[51.42049,-0.30653],[51.42126,-0.30595],[51.42305,-0.30673],[51.42463,-0.30799],[51.4257,-0.30926],[51.42676,-0.31108],[51.42988,-0.3182],[51.4314,-0.3241],[51.43091,-0.32341],[51.43094,-0.32236],[51.43091,-0.32341],[51.43315,-0.32719],[51.4311,-0.32281],[51.43133,-0.32311],[51.4311,-0.32281],[51.43196,-0.32595],[51.43375,-0.32781],[51.43641,-0.32846],[51.44003,-0.33068],[51.44103,-0.33082],[51.4417,-0.33056],[51.44319,-0.32908],[51.44368,-0.32816],[51.44573,-0.32108],[51.44603,-0.31947],[51.44643,-0.31554],[51.44786,-0.30921],[51.44839,-0.30743],[51.44947,-0.30544],[51.45044,-0.30433],[51.45103,-0.30383],[51.45264,-0.30325],[51.45439,-0.30388],[51.45681,-0.30608],[51.45816,-0.30806],[51.46031,-0.31392],[51.46223,-0.31719],[51.46215,-0.31622],[51.46156,-0.31613],[51.46176,-0.31724],[51.46276,-0.31799],[51.46416,-0.32003],[51.4649,-0.32072],[51.46556,-0.32094],[51.46598,-0.32163],[51.46613,-0.32168],[51.46754,-0.32171],[51.46769,-0.32156],[51.46874,-0.32177],[51.46936,-0.32164],[51.47019,-0.32124],[51.47075,-0.32045],[51.47099,-0.31941],[51.47105,-0.31847],[51.46539,-0.3208],[51.46703,-0.31996],[51.46856,-0.31971],[51.47085,-0.31878],[51.47159,-0.31733],[51.47249,-0.31422],[51.47357,-0.31127],[51.47479,-0.30833],[51.47542,-0.3072],[51.47666,-0.30567],[51.47841,-0.30438],[51.47995,-0.30275],[51.48158,-0.30046],[51.48288,-0.29912],[51.48516,-0.29556],[51.48579,-0.29398],[51.48641,-0.29165],[51.4868,-0.28907],[51.4871,-0.28865],[51.4874,-0.28979],[51.48729,-0.29173],[51.48712,-0.29252],[51.48593,-0.29615],[51.48553,-0.29688],[51.48439,-0.29781],[51.48406,-0.2977],[51.48345,-0.29815],[51.4871,-0.28865],[51.48681,-0.28613],[51.48633,-0.28412],[51.48572,-0.28272],[51.48519,-0.28234],[51.48494,-0.28194],[51.48382,-0.27917],[51.48222,-0.27716],[51.48119,-0.2763],[51.47874,-0.27514],[51.47695,-0.27407],[51.47472,-0.27209],[51.47322,-0.2701],[51.47177,-0.26712],[51.47131,-0.26555],[51.47088,-0.26297],[51.47086,-0.25971],[51.47126,-0.25729],[51.4722,-0.25479],[51.47313,-0.25336],[51.47475,-0.2519],[51.47723,-0.25071],[51.47889,-0.2504],[51.48106,-0.25047],[51.48251,-0.25024],[51.48402,-0.24943],[51.48525,-0.24814],[51.48703,-0.2447],[51.48842,-0.24265],[51.48924,-0.2405],[51.48958,-0.23871],[51.48968,-0.23741],[51.48965,-0.23474],[51.48946,-0.23337],[51.48898,-0.23198],[51.48811,-0.23028],[51.48676,-0.22845],[51.48565,-0.22729],[51.48487,-0.22681],[51.48177,-0.22564],[51.48095,-0.22579],[51.48016,-0.22562],[51.47756,-0.22563],[51.47608,-0.22522],[51.47457,-0.2241],[51.47233,-0.22176],[51.46923,-0.21781],[51.46782,-0.21537],[51.46703,-0.21338],[51.46645,-0.21164],[51.46478,-0.20533],[51.46415,-0.20102],[51.46402,-0.19887],[51.46409,-0.19748],[51.4639,-0.19519],[51.46399,-0.19319],[51.46432,-0.19017],[51.46511,-0.18739],[51.46606,-0.18505],[51.46745,-0.18298],[51.46918,-0.18153],[51.47105,-0.18038],[51.47272,-0.17963],[51.47342,-0.17902],[51.47621,-0.17808],[51.4768,-0.17765],[51.47759,-0.17776],[51.47998,-0.17523],[51.48068,-0.17394],[51.48137,-0.17218],[51.48219,-0.16801],[51.48264,-0.16424],[51.48283,-0.16348],[51.4831,-0.16018],[51.48453,-0.15002],[51.48462,-0.14624],[51.48434,-0.14352],[51.48386,-0.14039],[51.48386,-0.13756],[51.48468,-0.13286],[51.48596,-0.12936],[51.488,-0.12676],[51.49119,-0.12404],[51.49215,-0.12386],[51.49378,-0.12299],[51.49553,-0.12259],[51.50422,-0.12126],[51.5058,-0.12073],[51.50696,-0.11975],[51.50827,-0.11806],[51.50895,-0.11632],[51.5095,-0.11391],[51.5098,-0.11107],[51.50991,-0.10651],[51.50981,-0.10159],[51.50933,-0.09602],[51.50836,-0.09193],[51.50769,-0.08519],[51.50697,-0.08063],[51.505,-0.07333],[51.50388,-0.07072],[51.50245,-0.06579],[51.50193,-0.06273],[51.50167,-0.0602],[51.50195,-0.05785],[51.50239,-0.05598],[51.5028,-0.05487],[51.50658,-0.04815],[51.50793,-0.0455],[51.50837,-0.04393],[51.50859,-0.0421],[51.50862,-0.03962],[51.50849,-0.03824],[51.50808,-0.03609],[51.50759,-0.03417],[51.50691,-0.03239],[51.50644,-0.0315],[51.50542,-0.03036],[51.50406,-0.02966],[51.50269,-0.02937],[51.49841,-0.03002],[51.49467,-0.03014],[51.49303,-0.02982],[51.49163,-0.02901],[51.48943,-0.02729],[51.48748,-0.02469],[51.4868,-0.02344],[51.48539,-0.02002],[51.48477,-0.01765],[51.48452,-0.01337],[51.48474,-0.0106],[51.48516,-0.00826],[51.48581,-0.00575],[51.48661,-0.00389],[51.48768,-0.00219],[51.48831,-0.00148],[51.48932,-0.00078],[51.49091,-0.00045],[51.49266,-0.00083],[51.4967,-0.0036],[51.49834,-0.00453],[51.50012,-0.00509],[51.50146,-0.00504],[51.50324,-0.00433],[51.50494,-0.00277],[51.50587,-0.00132],[51.5065,0.00048],[51.50677,0.0027],[51.5067,0.00418],[51.50616,0.00597],[51.50551,0.0076],[51.50486,0.00882],[51.50408,0.00992],[51.49939,0.01534],[51.49881,0.01622],[51.49736,0.01919],[51.49652,0.02192],[51.49615,0.02401],[51.496,0.02686],[51.49609,0.02905],[51.49682,0.03494],[51.49683,0.03642],[51.4972,0.04015],[51.49737,0.04419],[51.49717,0.04951],[51.49643,0.05863],[51.49677,0.06619],[51.49748,0.07153],[51.49786,0.07319],[51.49838,0.07486],[51.49949,0.0771],[51.50049,0.07845],[51.50216,0.08027],[51.50474,0.08275],[51.50749,0.08495],[51.50969,0.08805],[51.51099,0.09095],[51.51155,0.094],[51.5119,0.09971],[51.51192,0.10088],[51.51164,0.10348],[51.5115,0.10662],[51.51156,0.10819],[51.51183,0.11023],[51.51283,0.11449],[51.51314,0.11659],[51.51358,0.11829],[51.51449,0.12077],[51.51515,0.12337],[51.51543,0.12527],[51.51553,0.12771],[51.51543,0.13053],[51.51521,0.1327],[51.51459,0.13593],[51.51377,0.13904],[51.51159,0.14454],[51.51037,0.14809],[51.50925,0.15326],[51.50887,0.1564],[51.50871,0.16006],[51.50845,0.16173],[51.50802,0.16359],[51.50693,0.16691],[51.5057,0.16966],[51.50365,0.17258],[51.50217,0.17413],[51.50115,0.17495],[51.4998,0.17572],[51.49704,0.17689],[51.49184,0.17835],[51.49045,0.17901],[51.48896,0.18002],[51.488,0.18083],[51.48697,0.18214],[51.48623,0.18333],[51.48539,0.18515],[51.48445,0.18818],[51.48415,0.19197],[51.48419,0.19556],[51.48439,0.19901],[51.4857,0.2077],[51.48588,0.21031],[51.48563,0.21382],[51.48491,0.21718],[51.48294,0.2221],[51.48133,0.22574],[51.48004,0.22775],[51.47685,0.23351],[51.47248,0.24078],[51.47019,0.2452],[51.46687,0.25275],[51.46342,0.26201],[51.46132,0.26627],[51.45982,0.26896],[51.45857,0.27206],[51.45807,0.27382],[51.45763,0.27602],[51.45747,0.28173],[51.45763,0.28353],[51.45797,0.28502],[51.45883,0.28754],[51.45995,0.28952],[51.46646,0.29875],[51.46925,0.30327],[51.46952,0.304],[51.46973,0.30509],[51.47002,0.30784],[51.47011,0.31338],[51.46976,0.31544],[51.46857,0.31895],[51.4677,0.32065],[51.46628,0.32247],[51.46273,0.32587],[51.45796,0.32944],[51.45305,0.33265],[51.45197,0.33413],[51.4505,0.33778],[51.44988,0.33997],[51.44923,0.34442],[51.44875,0.34887],[51.44835,0.35597]],"crossings":[[51.41387,-0.50124],[51.38887,-0.48638],[51.38094,-0.45909],[51.38731,-0.43127],[51.40523,-0.40673],[51.41018,-0.37313],[51.4037,-0.34262],[51.43076,-0.32163],[51.46208,-0.31748],[51.46054,-0.31432],[51.41117,-0.30869],[51.45743,-0.30699],[51.48697,-0.28752],[51.47306,-0.26977],[51.47283,-0.25382],[51.48822,-0.2305],[51.46694,-0.2131],[51.46589,-0.20954],[51.46499,-0.18783],[51.48123,-0.17253],[51.48235,-0.16667],[51.48454,-0.14966],[51.4876,-0.12727],[51.49453,-0.12282],[51.50085,-0.12178],[51.50642,-0.12021],[51.50868,-0.11701],[51.50987,-0.10431],[51.50955,-0.09853],[51.50887,-0.09406],[51.50793,-0.08763],[51.50557,-0.07544],[51.48489,-0.00976],[51.49659,0.06225]]},"places":[{"slug":"houses-of-parliament","name":"Houses of Parliament & Big Ben","area":"Westminster","address":"Parliament Square, Westminster, SW1A 0AA","station":"Westminster","walk":3,"lat":51.499387,"lng":-0.124566,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/visiting-and-tours/","hours_short":"Tours, booked ahead","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/1567699","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The building in every photograph of London, with the clock tower everyone calls Big Ben at one end. Free to look at from the square; going inside means a tour booked ahead.","note":"The Palace of Westminster is the Victorian rebuilding after the fire of 1834: Charles Barry's composition along the river and Augustus Pugin's Gothic detail down to the doorknobs, with the Lords, the Commons and the monarch's route through the Royal Gallery laid out along one axis. Westminster Hall, begun by William Rufus in 1097, survived the fire and the Blitz, and its hammer-beam roof of 1393 is the largest medieval timber roof in northern Europe. The Elizabeth Tower holds the Great Clock of 1859 and the 13.5-tonne bell that is the real Big Ben, cracked since its first summer. The tours go through both chambers and the Hall; the tower tour climbs 334 steps to the belfry and stands behind the dials.","note_links":null,"reading":"The Houses of Parliament may be London's most convincing piece of historical illusion. Seen from across the Thames, the pinnacles, towers, Gothic windows and acres of carved stone suggest a building that has accumulated over the Middle Ages. In reality, almost the entire riverfront is Victorian. The present Palace of Westminster was constructed after 1840, and its most famous tower was not completed until the 1850s. The genuinely medieval part is largely hidden around the corner: Westminster Hall, begun more than seven centuries earlier.\n\nEven the name of London's best-known landmark is misleading. Big Ben is not technically the clock tower. It is the 13.5-tonne bell inside it. The tower was simply the Clock Tower for most of its existence and was renamed Elizabeth Tower only in 2012, to mark Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. Londoners have nevertheless been calling the whole structure Big Ben for so long that the distinction is now largely a matter for pedants and pub quizzes.\n\nThe history of Parliament on this site begins long before either existed. Westminster was once Thorney Island, a marshy patch of higher ground surrounded by branches of the River Tyburn beside a much wider Thames. Edward the Confessor built a royal palace here in the eleventh century while constructing Westminster Abbey alongside it. The proximity was deliberate: church, king and eventually government grew up almost on top of one another.\n\nThe oldest surviving fragment came a generation later. William II, known as William Rufus, began Westminster Hall in 1097. Completed two years later, it was probably the largest hall in Europe, a space intended as a demonstration of royal power rather than merely somewhere to hold meetings or eat dinner. Its dimensions are still extraordinary: roughly 73 metres long and 20 metres wide.\n\nWhat you see overhead, however, is not Norman. Richard II remodelled the Hall three centuries later and commissioned its immense hammer-beam roof in 1393. The carpentry of Hugh Herland allowed an uninterrupted span of about 20 metres without rows of columns beneath it. Around 660 tonnes of oak were framed near Farnham in Surrey and transported to Westminster by wagon and barge. It remains the largest medieval timber roof in Northern Europe.\n\nThe Hall became a stage for some of the most consequential episodes in British history. Royal courts sat here for centuries. Charles I was tried for treason here in 1649 before being executed along Whitehall. Later it became the setting for state trials, coronation banquets and, eventually, lyings-in-state. The building now encountered by visitors as an entrance to Parliament was therefore already around 700 years old before the Victorian Palace surrounding it was conceived.\n\nParliament itself settled into the old royal palace almost by accident. Henry VIII largely abandoned Westminster after a fire in 1512 and moved his court to the nearby Palace of Whitehall. Parliamentary institutions increasingly occupied the buildings left behind. In 1547 the House of Commons was given the former St Stephen's Chapel, whose long, narrow interior had opposing rows of choir stalls. That arrangement helped create the face-to-face layout still used in the Commons Chamber today. One of the most distinctive features of British parliamentary politics is therefore partly an architectural inheritance from a medieval chapel.\n\nBy the nineteenth century the old Palace of Westminster was an extraordinary jumble. Medieval halls and chapels had acquired Classical alterations, offices, passages and additions by architects including Christopher Wren, James Wyatt and John Soane. It was historically fascinating but increasingly unsuitable for a modern legislature.\n\nThen, on 16 October 1834, almost all of it disappeared.\n\nThe cause was remarkably mundane. The Exchequer had accumulated old wooden tally sticks, an obsolete system once used to record financial transactions. Rather than simply remove them, workmen were instructed to burn two cartloads in furnaces beneath the House of Lords. The fires were allowed to become too hot, igniting nearby timber. By early evening flames were erupting through the Palace. Crowds gathered along the Thames to watch one of nineteenth-century London's greatest spectacles; J.M.W. Turner was among the artists who subsequently depicted it.\n\nThe Lords and Commons Chambers were lost. Westminster Hall very nearly followed them. Firefighters and volunteers concentrated their efforts on its ancient roof, aided by scaffolding already erected inside for repairs, a change in the wind and eventually enough water pumped from the Thames. Almost the entire parliamentary complex was destroyed, but the hall survived.\n\nThe catastrophe gave Britain an unusual opportunity: to invent what a national parliament should look like.\n\nA Royal Commission decided that the replacement could not be Classical. Designs had to be either Gothic or Elizabethan, partly so that the new building would harmonise with Westminster Abbey and the surviving medieval structures. There was politics in the choice too. Classical architecture had become associated in some minds with republicanism and revolution; Gothic could instead be presented as a native architectural tradition tied to monarchy, continuity and the institutions of medieval England.\n\nThe competition was won by Charles Barry. This is slightly ironic because Barry was not primarily a Gothic architect. His underlying instincts were often Classical: symmetry, processional planning and carefully controlled proportions. To supply the intense medieval detail the project required, he increasingly relied on the brilliant young Augustus Welby Pugin, one of the great evangelists of the Gothic Revival.\n\nTheir division of labour explains much of the Palace's character. Barry was responsible for the huge architectural composition and its organisation; Pugin supplied an extraordinary amount of its Gothic language. He designed carvings, furniture, stained glass, metalwork, decorative schemes and countless fittings. Parliament's own architectural history notes that his involvement extended all the way down to such objects as doorknobs and spill trays.\n\nThe result is more carefully organised than its picturesque exterior suggests. From the river, Barry created an exceptionally long horizontal fa\u00e7ade punctuated by an irregular skyline of turrets and towers. Inside, the principal ceremonial rooms form a constitutional diagram in stone. The Sovereign enters beneath Victoria Tower, progresses through the royal apartments and Royal Gallery towards the House of Lords; beyond lies Central Lobby and then the House of Commons. Monarch, Lords and Commons - the three components of Parliament - are effectively arranged along the same architectural spine.\n\nThe towers themselves have different jobs. Victoria Tower, at the southern end, was designed both as the grand royal entrance and as an enormous fireproof repository for Parliament's records. At 98.5 metres, it is actually taller than the Elizabeth Tower opposite. For years it was claimed as the largest and tallest square stone tower in the world.\n\nThe elegant tower in the middle is stranger. The Central Tower rises 91 metres above Central Lobby and looks like a purely decorative Gothic spire. It was actually conceived as part of the Palace's ventilation system: a giant chimney through which stale air and smoke could escape. One of the building's most conspicuous architectural ornaments was therefore originally a piece of environmental engineering.\n\nAnd then there is the tower everyone notices first.\n\nBarry struggled with how to make the proposed clock sufficiently prominent, and Pugin produced the detailed designs for the tower and its four clock faces. Parliament records these as among Pugin's final drawings for Barry before his death in 1852, aged only forty. The completed tower rises 96.3 metres, but the apparent delicacy of its Gothic decoration hides a distinctly industrial structure assembled from brick, stone and iron. Much of it was even built without conventional external scaffolding: materials were hauled up through the interior while a movable gantry rose with the masonry.\n\nThe clock inside was intended to be as technologically impressive as the architecture outside. The Astronomer Royal, George Airy, demanded a turret clock capable of striking the hour accurately to within a second - a formidable specification for a mechanism exposed to weather and driving enormous hands on four external faces. Edmund Beckett Denison devised the mechanism and clockmaker Edward John Dent was commissioned to build it, with Dent's stepson Frederick completing the work after his death.\n\nDenison's crucial innovation was the double three-legged gravity escapement. It largely isolated the pendulum from forces such as wind pressure on the giant hands, allowing the mechanism to maintain extraordinary accuracy. The Great Clock began keeping time on 31 May 1859.\n\nThere is still something delightfully mechanical about how that accuracy is adjusted. The 4.4-metre pendulum can be fine-tuned using old pre-decimal pennies placed on it. Adding a single penny makes the clock gain roughly two-fifths of a second over 24 hours. Each dial is seven metres across; the minute hands are 4.2 metres long and weigh about 100 kilograms including their counterweights. From Parliament Square the clock looks like a piece of ornament. Inside the tower it is a five-tonne machine.\n\nThe bell proved much more troublesome. The first great bell was cast in 1856 but developed a 1.2-metre crack while being tested in New Palace Yard and had to be broken up. Its replacement was cast by George Mears at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in April 1858. It weighed 13.5 tonnes and was so large that it had to be turned sideways before being hauled up inside the tower, a process taking around thirty hours.\n\nThis is the bell properly called Big Ben. The origin of the nickname is not completely certain, although Parliament considers it probably a joking reference to Sir Benjamin Hall, the physically imposing First Commissioner of Works overseeing the project. Another tradition connects it with the heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt. The uncertainty is worth retaining: one of Britain's most famous names appears to have begun as a nickname whose inventor nobody recorded.\n\nBig Ben first sounded in July 1859. Within weeks, it too cracked. Replacing another enormous bell would have been exceptionally difficult, so an ingenious repair was adopted instead. The bell was rotated so that the hammer struck an undamaged section, the original hammer was replaced with a lighter one, and a small square was cut at the end of the crack to prevent it spreading. Big Ben still carries the crack today. The slight imperfection in its famous E-natural note is therefore not deterioration awaiting repair; it is part of the sound London has known for more than 160 years.\n\nThere are other details almost invisible from the pavement. Beneath each clock face is the Latin inscription Domine salvam fac Reginam nostram Victoriam Primam - \"O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First\". Higher up is the Ayrton Light, installed in the nineteenth century and illuminated when either House is sitting after dark. The tower is simultaneously public clock, bell tower and distant indicator that Parliament is at work.\n\nThe rest of the Palace was also technologically modern beneath its medieval costume. Iron joists, brick arches and large amounts of metal construction were employed partly in an attempt to make the replacement safer from fire. Even so, the materials produced their own problems. Much of the exterior was faced with limestone from Anston in Yorkshire. Deterioration was visible by 1849, only a few years after construction began, as poor stone selection and London's polluted coal-burning atmosphere attacked its elaborate carving. Repair campaigns have continued ever since.\n\nThe Palace would face fire again under very different circumstances. During the Second World War it was struck by air raids on fourteen occasions. On the night of 10 May 1941 incendiaries set both Westminster Hall and the House of Commons ablaze. Firefighters concluded that they could not save both. The decision was made to protect the irreplaceable medieval hall; Barry's Commons Chamber was destroyed.\n\nThis created another opportunity to redesign Parliament. Winston Churchill famously argued against taking it. He wanted the Commons rebuilt in essentially its old shape, believing its intimate size and opposing benches were important to British parliamentary life. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed the replacement, which opened in 1950. So even the Commons Chamber seen today is not Victorian: it is a post-war reconstruction consciously preserving a spatial tradition inherited ultimately from St Stephen's Chapel.\n\nBig Ben survived the war, although its illuminated faces and the Ayrton Light were blacked out from 1939 so they could not help enemy aircraft navigate over London. The clock became so associated with national continuity that its chimes acquired a significance far beyond telling the time, particularly through radio broadcasts.\n\nThe tower's appearance today also contains a small historical correction. During the major conservation undertaken between 2017 and 2022, researchers analysed surviving layers of Victorian paint and original drawings. They discovered that parts of the clock faces now familiar in black had originally been painted Prussian blue and gold. The restored blue detailing visible today is therefore not a modern embellishment but an attempt to recover Barry and Pugin's original scheme.\n\nThe Palace of Westminster is consequently much more complicated than the apparently ancient building on postcards. It contains an eleventh-century hall beneath a fourteenth-century roof; a parliamentary layout partly inherited from a medieval chapel; a nineteenth-century palace dressed deliberately to look older than it is; an industrial clock disguised inside a Gothic tower; and a twentieth-century Commons Chamber reconstructed after wartime destruction.\n\nEven the skyline is deceptive. The tallest tower is not Big Ben but Victoria Tower. The elegant central spire began life as a ventilation chimney. The famous bell is cracked. The tower named for Elizabeth II acquired that name only in 2012. And the oldest, most historically remarkable structure is not the one everyone photographs from Westminster Bridge.\n\nThe Victorians were not simply rebuilding Parliament after a fire. They were designing a visual history of Britain - selecting medieval architecture to give a modern constitutional state the appearance of deep continuity. It worked almost too well.","figure":{"src":"/img/houses-of-parliament.jpg?v=d60b87cf","thumb":"/img/houses-of-parliament-480.jpg?v=88dbd74f","width":1024,"height":576,"alt":"The Palace of Westminster along the Thames, the Victoria Tower at one end and the Elizabeth Tower at the other, with Westminster Bridge beyond","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Christian David, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_seen_from_the_north_bank_of_the_Thames,_London.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-houses-of-parliament-2.jpg?v=05177be8","thumb":"/img/own-houses-of-parliament-2-480.jpg?v=42d5a73f","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Victoria Tower Gardens under autumn plane trees, the Victoria Tower at the end","caption":"From Victoria Tower Gardens in autumn."},{"src":"/img/own-houses-of-parliament.jpg?v=3a5d8489","thumb":"/img/own-houses-of-parliament-480.jpg?v=2a7df5c6","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The Victoria Tower floodlit at night, the Elizabeth Tower lit further along","caption":"The Victoria Tower at night."},{"src":"/img/own-big-ben.jpg?v=ad8a957e","thumb":"/img/own-big-ben-480.jpg?v=c7687d4a","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The Elizabeth Tower seen from directly below: the clock face with its blue dial and gilded numerals, the gilt and green ironwork of the belfry above, and the pinnacled roofline of the Palace of Westminster alongside."},{"src":"/img/own-big-ben-2.jpg?v=724914cd","thumb":"/img/own-big-ben-2-480.jpg?v=d547139c","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The Houses of Parliament and the Elizabeth Tower across the Thames on a clear winter day, seen over a stainless steel fountain playing in a round pool, with Westminster Bridge to the right.","caption":"A view of Big Ben from the south of the river."},{"src":"/img/own-big-ben-3.jpg?v=4d8221d2","thumb":"/img/own-big-ben-3-480.jpg?v=b408acee","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The top of the Elizabeth Tower against a deep blue evening sky, two of its clock faces lit gold, with the gilded ironwork and spire above them."}],"from":"monuments/houses-of-parliament","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":1,"whats_on":[{"slug":"big-ben-tour","name":"Big Ben Tour","href":"/museums/houses-of-parliament/big-ben-tour/","verdict":"334 steps up the Elizabeth Tower to stand behind the dials.","runs":null,"types":["heights","history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"guided-tour-of-the-palace-of-westminster","name":"Guided tour of the Palace of Westminster","href":"/museums/houses-of-parliament/guided-tour-of-the-palace-of-westminster/","verdict":"Ninety minutes through both chambers and Westminster Hall with a Parliament guide.","runs":null,"types":["history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"speakers-house-tour","name":"Speaker's House Tour","href":"/museums/houses-of-parliament/speakers-house-tour/","verdict":"The Speaker of the Commons lives in the Palace, and this is the way into the state rooms.","runs":null,"types":["art","history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","Art & design"]},{"slug":"westminster-hall-and-the-public-galleries","name":"Westminster Hall and the public galleries","href":"/museums/houses-of-parliament/westminster-hall-and-the-public-galleries/","verdict":"Free into the oldest building in Parliament, and into the Commons and the Lords when they sit.","runs":null,"types":["free","history","permanent"],"clue":["History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/houses-of-parliament/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/houses-of-parliament/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/houses-of-parliament/"},{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/houses-of-parliament/"}],"maps_q":"Houses of Parliament & Big Ben, Parliament Square, Westminster, SW1A 0AA, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Westminster Hall","s":"westminster-hall","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":78},{"n":"Jewel Tower","s":"jewel-tower","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":163},{"n":"Pankhurst Memorial","s":"pankhurst-memorial","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":186}],"near_same":[{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":195},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":451},{"s":"london-eye","m":563},{"s":"tate-britain","m":940},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":959},{"s":"national-gallery","m":1095}]},{"slug":"british-museum","name":"British Museum","area":"Bloomsbury","address":"Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG","station":"Tottenham Court Road","walk":6,"lat":51.519312,"lng":-0.126877,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,20.5],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"Sa-Th 10:00-17:00; Fr 10:00-20:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.britishmuseum.org","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"relation/177044","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Egyptian mummies, the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon sculptures, free and with no ticket needed. It stays open late on Friday, which is the calm way to see it.","note":"The British Museum was the first museum of its kind anywhere: national, belonging to neither church nor king, free to everyone and meant to collect everything. It began with the will of Sir Hans Sloane, a physician who had gathered 71,000 objects, books, dried plants and antiquities and offered them to the nation for \u00a320,000, a fraction of what they were worth. Parliament accepted in 1753, raised the money by lottery, and the museum opened in Montagu House in Bloomsbury in 1759. Robert Smirke's quadrangle replaced the house from the 1820s, and the round Reading Room in its courtyard, where Marx and Lenin worked, held the national library until the books left for St Pancras in 1997. Norman Foster then roofed the courtyard in glass, and the Great Court of 2000 is the largest covered square in Europe.\n\nThe collection, eight million objects, is the largest in the world and grew with the empire, which is why some of the best-known things in it are formally claimed by the countries they came from. Sixty-odd galleries hold it: Egyptian sculpture and the Rosetta Stone on the ground floor, the Parthenon sculptures and the Assyrian palace reliefs off the same route, and upstairs the mummies, Sutton Hoo, Japan, China and South Asia, the Islamic world, clocks, money and Mexico, with the Enlightenment Gallery and the Waddesdon Bequest just inside the Great Court. Six and a half million people came in 2025. Entry is free, and only the loan exhibitions charge.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/british-museum.jpg?v=a6a69dc1","thumb":"/img/british-museum-480.jpg?v=6d20fa16","width":1024,"height":637,"alt":"Fa\u00e7ade of the British Museum","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ham, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_from_NE_2_(cropped).JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/british-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":2,"whats_on":[{"slug":"british-museum-guided-tours","name":"British Museum guided tours","href":"/museums/british-museum/british-museum-guided-tours/","verdict":"Free volunteer-led tours most days, and a ticketed lap of the highlights at weekends.","runs":null,"types":["free","history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"early-netherlandish-drawings","name":"Early Netherlandish drawings","href":"/museums/british-museum/early-netherlandish-drawings/","verdict":"The moment a drawing stopped being a preparatory sketch and became the finished thing.","runs":{"to":"2026-09-20"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"the-british-museums-permanent-galleries","name":"The British Museum's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/british-museum/the-british-museums-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, Sutton Hoo and the mummies, all free.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"john-constable-views-of-nature","name":"John Constable: views of nature","href":"/museums/british-museum/john-constable-views-of-nature/","verdict":"Constable's cloud studies and sketches, free, in the Museum's drawings rooms.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-02","to":"2026-10-04"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"declaring-independence-usa-250","name":"Declaring Independence: USA 250","href":"/museums/british-museum/declaring-independence-usa-250/","verdict":"The Museum's own take on 1776, for the 250th anniversary.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-30","to":"2026-11-29"},"types":["exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"the-bayeux-tapestry","name":"The Bayeux Tapestry","href":"/museums/british-museum/the-bayeux-tapestry/","verdict":"Seventy metres of 11th-century embroidery, in England for the first time since it was made.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-10","to":"2027-07-11"},"types":["exhibition","family","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"korea","name":"Korea","href":"/museums/british-museum/korea/","verdict":"Two thousand years of Korean art, most of it never seen in Britain before.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-01","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"bayeux-late-medieval-making","name":"Bayeux Late: medieval making","href":"/museums/british-museum/bayeux-late-medieval-making/","verdict":"The first Bayeux Late: workshops and making, free, on a Friday night.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-09","to":"2026-10-09"},"types":["free","history","workshop"],"clue":["Make something","History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/british-museum/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/british-museum/"}],"maps_q":"British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG, London","in_area":{"slug":"bloomsbury","name":"Bloomsbury"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Darlish Bloomsbury","s":"darlish-bloomsbury","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":170},{"n":"Ram Mohan Roy's lodging, Bedford Square","s":"ram-mohan-roy","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":182},{"n":"Maggs Bros.","s":"maggs-bros","c":"classic-british-shops","cn":"Classic British Shops","m":189}],"near_same":[{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":1015},{"s":"national-gallery","m":1166},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":1168},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":1286},{"s":"london-eye","m":1855},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":1908}]},{"slug":"westminster-abbey","name":"Westminster Abbey","area":"Westminster","address":"20 Dean's Yard, SW1P 3PA","station":"Westminster","walk":3,"lat":51.499401,"lng":-0.127391,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.westminster-abbey.org/visit-us/opening-times","hours_short":"Monday to Saturday from 09:00 or 09:30; last entry varies by day, \u00a331","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Free for services, including evensong most days.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.westminster-abbey.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/364313092","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The church every English coronation has been held in since 1066, and the burial place of kings, Newton and Darwin. Ticketed, Monday to Saturday; on Sunday it goes back to being a church.","note":"Every coronation since 1066 has been held here, on the Coronation Chair, and the last hundred years have added the scenes the Crown audience knows by heart. Elizabeth married in 1947 in a dress bought with ration coupons, and was crowned here in 1953 in the first coronation shown on television. Elton John sang Candle in the Wind at Diana's funeral in 1997, and her brother gave the address. William and Catherine married in 2011 under an avenue of trees planted down the nave. The Queen's coffin came here in September 2022, and Charles III was crowned the following May.\n\nAround all that is the church itself, Gothic and full of the dead: kings and queens, Newton, Darwin, Dickens, and the grave of the Unknown Warrior just inside the west door. Royal brides have laid their wedding bouquets on that grave since 1923, when the future Queen Mother left hers there on her way into the church.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-westminster-abbey.jpg?v=58507ac6","thumb":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-480.jpg?v=b58d218d","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"One of Westminster Abbey's west towers in low sun, seen from the lane below","caption":"A west tower in the last of the sun."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-2.jpg?v=9f2f7e93","thumb":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-2-480.jpg?v=f4839108","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The Abbey's pinnacles at night above lit street lamps and bare trees","caption":"The roofline at night."},{"src":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-3.jpg?v=b7af1268","thumb":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-3-480.jpg?v=00322be5","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The Abbey gardens, a brick range in front and the transept's rose window behind","caption":"The gardens, with the rose window over the roofs."},{"src":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-4.jpg?v=c0e7f619","thumb":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-4-480.jpg?v=28d67876","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The abbey's north front at dusk: a great rose window above three deep pointed porches crowded with carved figures, pinnacled turrets either side, and plane trees in leaf overhanging the view.","caption":"The north door of Westminster Abbey."},{"src":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-5.jpg?v=8253e0fc","thumb":"/img/own-westminster-abbey-5-480.jpg?v=38d05a3f","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The fan vault of the Lady Chapel from below: carved stone fanning out into hanging pendants across the whole ceiling, rows of heraldic banners in green, blue, red and gold along both sides above the stalls, and tall stained glass at the east end.","caption":"The Lady Chapel with its intricate fan vaulted ceiling."}],"from":"royal/westminster-abbey","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":3,"whats_on":[{"slug":"free-sunday-organ-recitals","name":"Free Sunday organ recitals","href":"/venues/westminster-abbey/free-sunday-organ-recitals/","verdict":"Half an hour on the Abbey organ at five on a Sunday, free, no ticket.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-13","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["concert","free","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/westminster-abbey/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/westminster-abbey/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/westminster-abbey/"},{"name":"Sacred London","href":"/sacred/westminster-abbey/"}],"maps_q":"Westminster Abbey, 20 Dean's Yard, SW1P 3PA, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Jewel Tower","s":"jewel-tower","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":122},{"n":"Supreme Court of the United Kingdom","s":"supreme-court-of-the-united-kingdom","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":122},{"n":"Millicent Fawcett statue","s":"millicent-fawcett-statue","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":141}],"near_same":[{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":195},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":337},{"s":"london-eye","m":731},{"s":"tate-britain","m":918},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":930},{"s":"national-gallery","m":1059}]},{"slug":"tower-of-london","name":"Tower of London","area":"Tower Hill","address":"Tower Hill, EC3N 4AB","station":"Tower Hill","walk":2,"lat":51.508133,"lng":-0.076286,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.hrp.org.uk/toweroflondon","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/370870741","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A real Norman castle, nine hundred years old, with the Crown Jewels kept inside it. Ticketed with a timed slot, and the jewels draw the longest queue in the place, so go to them first.","note":"The Tower is the castle William the Conqueror began in the years after 1066 to hold the city he had just taken. Its heart, the White Tower, went up from 1078 and is still among the most complete eleventh-century palaces in Europe; two rings of walls and a moat grew around it under Richard I, Henry III and Edward I, and the plan has barely changed since 1285. Over nine centuries it has been an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the Royal Mint, the public record office and the home of the Crown Jewels, which is what most of the queue is for. In the eighteenth century the lions could be seen for three halfpence, or for a cat or dog to feed them.\n\nIts reputation is bloodier than its record. Before the twentieth century only seven people were executed inside the walls, on Tower Green, among them Anne Boleyn in 1536 and Lady Jane Grey in 1554; the other 112 died in public on Tower Hill outside. Elizabeth I was a prisoner here before she was queen, Guy Fawkes confessed here, and twelve spies were shot here in the two world wars. Kings once spent the nights before their coronation at the Tower and rode from it to Westminster Abbey, a custom that ended with Charles II.\n\nThe Yeoman Warders, the Beefeaters, have guarded it since at least 1509, and their tours are included in the ticket and are the best way in. Six ravens are kept at all times, on the belief that the kingdom falls if they leave, with a Ravenmaster to look after them. The Crown Jewels pass on a moving walkway, so the day is decided by the queue, and the White Tower holds the Royal Armouries' arms and armour, Henry VIII's among it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/tower-of-london.jpg?v=2e4d3716","thumb":"/img/tower-of-london-480.jpg?v=f02693b3","width":1024,"height":643,"alt":"Tower of London viewed from the River Thames","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Bob Collowan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tower_of_London_viewed_from_the_River_Thames.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/tower-of-london","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":4,"whats_on":[{"slug":"ceremony-of-the-keys","name":"Ceremony of the Keys","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/ceremony-of-the-keys/","verdict":"The Tower has been locked this way every night for around 700 years.","runs":null,"types":["history"],"clue":["History"]},{"slug":"ravens-experience","name":"Ravens experience","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/ravens-experience/","verdict":"Forty-five minutes at the ravens' cages, an hour before the Tower opens to anybody else.","runs":null,"types":["history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"the-crown-jewels","name":"The Crown Jewels","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/the-crown-jewels/","verdict":"The working regalia of a monarchy, on a moving walkway, behind the thickest glass in London.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"yeoman-warder-tours","name":"Yeoman Warder tours","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/yeoman-warder-tours/","verdict":"The Beefeaters' own tour, every 45 minutes, included in the ticket and unbookable.","runs":null,"types":["family","history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"keys-club-experience","name":"Keys Club experience","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/keys-club-experience/","verdict":"A Warder, forty-five minutes, and a room the public does not normally get into.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"tower-of-london-opening-ceremony-experience","name":"Tower of London Opening Ceremony experience","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/tower-of-london-opening-ceremony-experience/","verdict":"In through the Middle Drawbridge before the Tower opens, to watch the gates unlocked.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-09-30"},"types":["history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]},{"slug":"tower-of-london-river-tour","name":"Tower of London River Tour","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/tower-of-london-river-tour/","verdict":"Forty minutes on the Thames, leaving from the Tower every hour.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["family","tour","water"],"clue":["Guided tour"]},{"slug":"halloween-at-the-tower-of-london","name":"Halloween at the Tower of London","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/halloween-at-the-tower-of-london/","verdict":"The Tower's ghosts come out for half term: a poet, a pirate, a queen and a bear.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-24","to":"2026-11-01"},"types":["family","history","seasonal"],"clue":["History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tower-of-london/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/tower-of-london/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/tower-of-london/"},{"name":"Secrets & Espionage","href":"/secrets/tower-of-london/"}],"maps_q":"Tower of London, Tower Hill, EC3N 4AB, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Fusiliers Museum","s":"fusiliers-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":71},{"n":"Tower Subway","s":"tower-subway","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":185},{"n":"Jack the Ripper Matinee","s":"jack-the-ripper-matinee","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":192}],"near_same":[{"s":"tower-bridge","m":297},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":389},{"s":"sky-garden","m":611},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":717},{"s":"borough-market","m":1105},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":1440}]},{"slug":"st-pauls-cathedral","name":"St Paul's Cathedral","area":"St Paul's","address":"St Paul's Churchyard, EC4M 8AD","station":"St Paul's","walk":2,"lat":51.513785,"lng":-0.098436,"hours":[[8.5,16.5],[8.5,16.5],[8.5,16.5],[8.5,16.5],[8.5,16.5],[8.5,16.5],null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 08:30-16:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.stpauls.co.uk/visit-us","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Last entry 16:00, \u00a327; the dome galleries from 09:30. Sundays for worship, which is free.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.stpauls.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/369161987","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Wren's domed cathedral, with 528 steps up inside the dome to a walkway above the rooftops. Ticketed Monday to Saturday; on Sunday there is no sightseeing and the services are free to attend.","note":"The fifth cathedral on the site, and the one Wren spent thirty-five years building after the Great Fire; it was finished in 1711. The dome is really three domes. There is an inner one, shallow enough to look right from the floor; a brick cone hidden inside it, which carries the weight of the stone lantern on top; and the outer one in lead, the shape that shows above the rooftops from half of London and that planning law protects by keeping certain views of it clear. The Whispering Gallery runs round the inside of it, and the crypt holds Nelson, Wellington and Wren himself, under an inscription that tells the reader to look around for his monument.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/st-pauls-wedding-1981.jpg?v=75db87f2","thumb":"/img/st-pauls-wedding-1981-480.jpg?v=09bb1dd5","width":670,"height":1024,"thumb_width":500,"credit":"Photo by the White House Photographic Office, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prince_Charles_and_Princess_Diana_and_crowd_outside_of_St._Paul%27s_Cathedral_during_the_Royal_Wedding_-_DPLA_-_7ba7daccb514108a0ef232b0175243b9.jpg","alt":"Charles and Diana coming down the steps of St Paul's after the wedding, her train spread out behind her, the open carriage waiting below","caption":"Coming down the steps, 29 July 1981."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-st-pauls-cathedral-2.jpg?v=c6fa1ff7","thumb":"/img/own-st-pauls-cathedral-2-480.jpg?v=6d0d8b2f","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"St Paul's dome floodlit at night above wet paving and a lit street lamp","caption":"The dome at night, after rain."}],"from":"sacred/st-pauls-cathedral","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":5,"whats_on":[{"slug":"soul-and-the-point-of-unity-at-st-pauls","name":"Soul and The Point of Unity at St Paul's","href":"/royal/st-pauls-cathedral/soul-and-the-point-of-unity-at-st-pauls/","verdict":"Two light works by Mykola Kabluka for the London Design Festival: a participatory projection across the west front, and a mirrored canopy in the churchyard that lights up at night.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-11","to":"2026-09-21"},"types":["art","exhibition","festival","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"celebrity-organ-recital-george-inscoe-on-cesar-franck","name":"Celebrity Organ Recital: George Inscoe on Cesar Franck","href":"/venues/st-pauls-cathedral/celebrity-organ-recital-george-inscoe-on-cesar-franck/","verdict":"Franck on the cathedral organ, under the dome, at half six.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-08","to":"2026-10-08"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/st-pauls-cathedral/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/st-pauls-cathedral/"},{"name":"Sacred London","href":"/sacred/st-pauls-cathedral/"}],"maps_q":"St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's Churchyard, EC4M 8AD, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Temple Bar","s":"temple-bar","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":91},{"n":"Shepherd and Sheep","s":"shepherd-and-sheep","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":101},{"n":"Paternoster Square","s":"paternoster-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":104}],"near_same":[{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":658},{"s":"tate-modern","m":714},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":1035},{"s":"sky-garden","m":1068},{"s":"borough-market","m":1072},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":1431}]},{"slug":"national-gallery","name":"National Gallery","area":"Trafalgar Square","address":"Orange Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 7HS","station":"Charing Cross","walk":2,"lat":51.508889,"lng":-0.128752,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,21.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Sa-Th 10:00-18:00; Fr 10:00-21:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/","instagram":"nationalgallery","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/4372002","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Leonardo, Turner and Van Eyck, along the north side of Trafalgar Square. Free and with no ticket; only the special exhibitions are paid.","note":"Unlike the Louvre or the Prado, the National Gallery was not a royal collection thrown open; Britain bought its one. In 1824 Parliament paid \u00a357,000 for the thirty-eight paintings of the banker John Julius Angerstein and hung them in his house at 100 Pall Mall, and the collection has been built since by purchase and by gift, two-thirds of it given. William Wilkins's building on the north side of Trafalgar Square opened in 1838 and was thought too small almost at once; the Sainsbury Wing of 1991, by Venturi and Scott Brown, added the west end and holds the earliest pictures. The gallery marked its two hundredth birthday in 2024 and reopened the refurbished Sainsbury Wing in 2025.\n\nIt is small for a national gallery, 2,300 paintings, and chosen so that nearly every step in Western painting between the 1250s and 1900 is here in a first-rate example: Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks and his cartoon of the Virgin and Child, bought by public subscription in 1962, Holbein's Ambassadors, Vel\u00e1zquez's Rokeby Venus, Turner's Fighting Temeraire, Constable's Hay Wain, Seurat's Bathers at Asni\u00e8res and Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Entry to all of it is free. Nobody sees it in a visit and the room plans by the door mean nobody needs to; pick six pictures and come back.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-national-gallery.jpg?v=2635fd17","thumb":"/img/own-national-gallery-480.jpg?v=cad2479f","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The National Gallery's portico and dome from Trafalgar Square, the steps empty","caption":"Before the crowds have arrived."},"figures":null,"from":"art/national-gallery","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":6,"whats_on":[{"slug":"the-national-gallerys-permanent-galleries","name":"The National Gallery's permanent galleries","href":"/art/national-gallery/the-national-gallerys-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Van Eyck, Leonardo, Vel\u00e1zquez, Turner and the Sunflowers, free, off Trafalgar Square.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"waldmuller-landscapes","name":"Waldm\u00fcller: Landscapes","href":"/museums/national-gallery/waldmuller-landscapes/","verdict":"Alpine light from a painter who worked outdoors decades before the Impressionists.","runs":{"to":"2026-09-20"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"monet-and-renoir-painting-side-by-side","name":"Monet and Renoir: Painting Side by Side","href":"/museums/national-gallery/monet-and-renoir-painting-side-by-side/","verdict":"Two friends painting the same river bank, hung side by side for the first time.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-27","to":"2026-09-15"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"renoir-and-love","name":"Renoir and Love","href":"/museums/national-gallery/renoir-and-love/","verdict":"Renoir's dancers and lovers, and the paintings he built a career on.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-03","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"yinka-shonibare-and-thomas-gainsborough-a-conversation","name":"Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A Conversation","href":"/museums/national-gallery/yinka-shonibare-and-thomas-gainsborough-a-conversation/","verdict":"A living artist answering an eighteenth-century portrait, in the same room as it.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-15","to":"2027-02-07"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"van-eyck-the-portraits","name":"Van Eyck: The Portraits","href":"/museums/national-gallery/van-eyck-the-portraits/","verdict":"The portraits of the man who made oil paint do what it does.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-21","to":"2027-04-11"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"catharina-van-hemessen-signature-works","name":"Catharina van Hemessen: Signature Works","href":"/museums/national-gallery/catharina-van-hemessen-signature-works/","verdict":"The first painter of either sex known to have signed a self-portrait at an easel.","runs":{"from":"2027-03-04","to":"2027-05-30"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"german-expressionism-modern-painting-19001918","name":"German Expressionism: Modern Painting 1900\u20131918","href":"/museums/national-gallery/german-expressionism-modern-painting-19001918/","verdict":"Br\u00fccke and Blaue Reiter, from the years before the war swallowed them.","runs":{"from":"2027-03-20","to":"2027-08-01"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/national-gallery/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/national-gallery/"}],"maps_q":"National Gallery, Orange Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 7HS, London","in_area":{"slug":"soho","name":"Soho"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"National Portrait Gallery","s":"national-portrait-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":59},{"n":"Diwali on the Square","s":"diwali-on-the-square","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":108},{"n":"Canada House Gallery","s":"canada-house-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":118}],"near_same":[{"s":"nelsons-column","m":137},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":405},{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":477},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":743},{"s":"london-eye","m":1001},{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":1059}]},{"slug":"tower-bridge","name":"Tower Bridge","area":"Butler's Wharf","address":"Tower Bridge, Bermondsey, SE1 2LY","station":"Tower Hill","walk":6,"lat":51.505517,"lng":-0.075366,"hours":[[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 09:30-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"Forthcoming bridge lifts are listed on the bridge's site at towerbridge.org.uk/bridge-lifts; a lift can be watched from the river walls for free.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.towerbridge.org.uk/","instagram":"towerbridge","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"node/2079674503","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The bridge with two towers that most people mean when they say London Bridge. Free to walk across; the ticket buys the high walkways, their glass floor and the Victorian engine room.","note":"By the 1880s London had spread a long way east of London Bridge, which was still the furthest bridge downstream: getting across meant walking west or paying a ferryman. A bridge here was the obvious answer and an impossible one, because the water below London Bridge \u2014 the Pool of London, the city's port \u2014 was lined with wharves and full of masted ships that had to reach them. Whatever was built had to let them through.\n\nThe answer was a road that opens. Horace Jones, the City's own architect, and John Wolfe Barry, an engineer, won the competition with a middle span in two halves that swing upward, and dressed the towers holding the machinery in stone, with turrets and pointed windows, so they would not shame the Tower of London next door. It opened in 1894 and the costume has fooled people ever since: this is a steel machine wearing a castle.\n\nThe visit goes up the north tower to the two walkways slung between them, forty-two metres above the road. They were built so that people on foot could cross while the bridge was open, were closed in 1910 because almost nobody bothered to climb up, and reopened in 1982; a glass floor went in in 2014, so you can watch the buses pass under your feet. The route ends in the engine rooms at the south end, with the Victorian steam engines that used to raise the road, kept polished and turning.","note_links":null,"reading":"Tower Bridge is one of London's most successful architectural deceptions. Its turrets, battlements, pointed windows and pale stone make it look like a surviving fragment of medieval London, somehow extending the neighbouring Tower of London across the Thames. In reality it opened in 1894. Beneath the Gothic costume is an enormous Victorian steel machine, assembled with millions of rivets and designed to solve an extremely modern problem: how to carry London's rapidly growing road traffic across one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world without preventing ships from reaching the docks upstream.\n\nEven its name encourages the wrong conclusion. Tower Bridge is not called Tower Bridge because it has two towers. The name refers to the Tower of London beside it; proposed designs existed before the familiar towers had even been decided upon. Its castle-like appearance came partly from the requirement that whatever enormous new structure appeared here should not overwhelm its far older neighbour.\n\nThe bridge exists because Victorian London had developed a serious geographical problem. By the second half of the nineteenth century the East End had expanded dramatically, with industry, docks and a population approaching a million people east of London Bridge. Yet London Bridge remained the lowest road crossing of the Thames. Getting from one side of the river to the other could mean a long diversion towards the City or reliance on ferries; journeys could take hours.\n\nBuilding another ordinary bridge downstream sounded obvious until the importance of the river was considered. The stretch between London Bridge and what became Tower Bridge formed part of the Pool of London, surrounded by wharves and warehouses and crowded with vessels bringing goods from around the world. Thousands of substantial ships still needed to reach the Upper Pool each year. A fixed bridge low enough to be convenient for carts, horses and pedestrians would effectively have put a barrier across one of the commercial arteries of the British Empire.\n\nLondon therefore needed two contradictory things in exactly the same place: an uninterrupted road and an uninterrupted shipping channel.\n\nIn 1876 the City of London established a Special Bridge or Subway Committee and invited ideas. More than fifty schemes were considered. Engineers proposed swing bridges, lifting bridges, rolling bridges, tunnels and extraordinary multi-level structures. Joseph Bazalgette \u2014 already famous for London's sewer system and Embankments \u2014 suggested high-level bridges that would simply pass above much of the shipping. Other proposals attempted to separate river and road traffic completely.\n\nThe process was hardly a model architectural competition. No winner emerged and the original competition was abandoned. One of the men involved in assessing the proposals was Horace Jones, the City Architect \u2014 who was simultaneously developing ideas of his own. The awkwardness is acknowledged even by Tower Bridge's official history. Eventually Jones joined forces with the civil engineer John Wolfe Barry and produced the scheme that was approved in 1884.\n\nTheir solution was not simply a lifting bridge. Tower Bridge is actually a combination of bridge types. The approaches on either side incorporate suspension structures, while the central roadway is divided into two enormous moving leaves called bascules. High above them, two walkways connect the towers and also form part of the structural system tying the bridge together. Historic England describes the result as a steel structure with Gothic towers, suspension side spans and a central opening bridge integrated into a single composition.\n\nThe word bascule comes from the French for a balance or seesaw, and that is essentially how the moving road works. Each half pivots around a shaft inside the river pier. The visible section projecting over the Thames is counterbalanced by an enormous weight moving through a hidden chamber behind the pivot. Each bascule weighs more than 1,200 tonnes, but a counterweight of roughly 400 tonnes means the machinery does not have to lift anything like that full mass from rest.\n\nSome of Tower Bridge's most spectacular spaces are consequently ones most people never see. Inside each river pier is a vast bascule chamber around 27 metres high. When the bridge opens, the counterweights descend into these cavernous brick-lined spaces as the road rises above the Thames. The towers that appear to stand solidly on massive stone piers are therefore partly wrapped around enormous moving machinery and voids.\n\nConstruction began in April 1886. Creating foundations in the middle of a tidal working river while allowing shipping to continue was one of the project's most difficult tasks. Iron caissons were sunk into the riverbed and excavated to depths approaching eight metres below it, providing enclosed working areas from which the foundations for the two central piers could be constructed. The river could not simply be closed while the Victorians built their bridge around it.\n\nThe project rapidly became less the work of a single architect than a huge collaboration between engineering specialists. Wolfe Barry served as chief engineer, Edward Cruttwell as resident engineer and Henry Marc Brunel \u2014 the son of Isambard Kingdom Brunel \u2014 as assistant engineer. Horace Jones died in 1887, only about a year after construction began, and never saw the bridge that bears the visual stamp of his design.\n\nWhat rose above the foundations was fundamentally a steel bridge. More than 11,000 tonnes of structural steel were fabricated for the towers and walkways, much of it by William Arrol & Co., the celebrated Scottish engineering company also involved with the Forth Bridge. An additional 1,200 tonnes of ornamental cast iron formed part of its contract. The steel skeleton was then enclosed in brick and clad with Cornish granite and Portland stone.\n\nThis is the key to understanding Tower Bridge's appearance. The masonry does not work like the load-bearing stone of the medieval Tower beside it. It protects and disguises an industrial frame. Look through some of the windows and internal spaces and the Victorian steelwork becomes visible behind the Gothic architecture. What seems at first to be a castle is closer to an extraordinarily elaborate stone casing around a piece of nineteenth-century infrastructure.\n\nThat disguise was deliberate. The competition demanded architecture appropriate to the setting of the Tower of London, and the final design uses pointed arches, pinnacles, turrets, steep roofs and fortress-like masonry to make an unprecedented piece of engineering look as though it belongs beside a medieval royal castle. There is even French ch\u00e2teau influence in the towers.\n\nThe effect can obscure just how technologically ambitious the bridge was. Its moving spans were originally operated not directly by steam engines but through a sophisticated hydraulic energy-storage system. Coal-fired boilers produced steam to power pumping engines. Those pumps forced water under pressure into six large accumulators, which stored energy until a ship required the bridge to open. High-pressure water could then be released to hydraulic drive engines, whose pistons turned huge cogs engaging with the bascules.\n\nThe accumulators were the Victorian equivalent of batteries. The boilers and pumps could steadily build up stored hydraulic pressure even while the bridge was closed, so enormous amounts of power were immediately available when an opening was required. It was an elegant answer to the problem of repeatedly moving roadways weighing more than a thousand tonnes while keeping waiting times manageable.\n\nThe high-level walkways were intended to solve the remaining inconvenience. A ship might interrupt horses and vehicles on the roadway, but pedestrians could climb the towers and continue across the river 42 metres above the Thames even while the bascules were open. The walkways were therefore not originally sightseeing platforms. They were part of the bridge's transport system.\n\nLondoners largely rejected the walkways. Climbing all those stairs proved less attractive than simply waiting a few minutes for the bridge to close again. The walkways were used so little that they were closed to the public in 1910. One of the most visually distinctive components of Tower Bridge had failed in its intended everyday purpose only sixteen years after opening. They remained inaccessible to ordinary visitors until 1982, when they reopened as part of the Tower Bridge visitor attraction.\n\nBefore any of that could be discovered, London celebrated the completion of what had taken eight years to build. On 30 June 1894 the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, formally opened Tower Bridge accompanied by Princess Alexandra and their son, the future George V. When the bascules rose, the first vessel through was the harbour master's cutter Daisy, followed by a ceremonial procession of ships.\n\nThe demand for the new crossing became obvious almost immediately. When it opened to pedestrian traffic in July 1894, more than 140,000 people crossed on the first day. By later that month an estimated 60,000 pedestrians and 8,000 horse-drawn vehicles were using it daily. This was not a decorative civic monument looking for a function: Victorian London had been waiting for it.\n\nThe river remained just as important. In its first year the bridge opened 6,194 times \u2014 an extraordinary average of roughly seventeen lifts every day. Bridge staff effectively watched continuously for vessels requiring passage, clearing the road and raising the bascules as ships approached.\n\nThat figure also tells the story of the vanished London around it. Today's riverside apartments, offices, restaurants and tourist attractions occupy a landscape that was once one of the busiest working ports on earth. Tower Bridge was designed around a Thames packed with commercial shipping. As London's docks migrated downstream and containerisation helped destroy the old upriver port, the need for constant bridge openings collapsed. By the late 1960s there were only a few hundred lifts a year.\n\nThe bridge nevertheless remained a working machine, sometimes with dramatic consequences. On the evening of 30 December 1952, route 78 bus driver Albert Gunter was crossing Tower Bridge when the bascule beneath him unexpectedly began to rise. Faced with the prospect of the bus sliding backwards or becoming trapped, he accelerated. The double-decker cleared the widening gap and landed on the other half of the bridge. Everyone survived, and Gunter received a \u00a310 reward for his quick thinking.\n\nBy then the machinery below was already becoming an anachronism. The original system required boilers to be fired and teams of workers to maintain steam pressure around the clock. From 1974 the machinery was modernised, and in 1976 the bridge became fully electro-hydraulic. Electric pumps now pressurise oil rather than steam engines pressurising water, but the basic mechanical principle remains beautifully Victorian: counterbalanced bascules rotating on their pivots while great cogs drive them open and closed. The original steam engines, pumps and accumulators survive in the Engine Rooms.\n\nEven the colours most people associate with Tower Bridge are relatively recent. Its ironwork was originally painted a bright chocolate brown. Before the Second World War the bridge was given a more subdued grey camouflage scheme. The red, white and blue treatment familiar today dates from its repainting for Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in 1977.\n\nThe next transformation was cultural rather than mechanical. In 1982 the long-closed walkways reopened as part of an exhibition inside the bridge. Their original transport function had become unnecessary, but their position high above the Thames made them ideal viewing galleries. Glass floors added in 2014 now allow visitors to stand above the roadway and, during a lift, watch the bascules separate beneath their feet.\n\nThe bridge has consequently reversed one of its original relationships. In the 1890s the high-level walkways existed so pedestrians would not have to wait for ships. Today people deliberately wait for the ships because watching Tower Bridge open has become an attraction in itself.\n\nRemarkably, river traffic still has priority under circumstances established by the bridge's original purpose. City Bridge Foundation states that registered vessels with a mast or superstructure of at least 30 feet can request an opening with 24 hours' notice, at no charge. The bridge can be required to lift at any time of day or night, throughout the year. A yacht on the Thames can therefore still stop road traffic across one of London's busiest landmarks because the fundamental bargain made with nineteenth-century shipping has never entirely disappeared.\n\nTower Bridge is unusual because its architecture encourages us to look at almost exactly the wrong things. The stone towers attract attention, but the important structure is the steel skeleton behind them. The picturesque upper walkways seem decorative, but they help tie the bridge together and were originally pedestrian bypasses. The enormous towers appear solid, while giant counterweights move through hidden chambers beneath them. The famous blue suspension elements are not merely ornament, and the apparently medieval bridge is younger than the Eiffel Tower.\n\nIt is also not quite the monument to Victorian certainty that its monumental appearance suggests. The design took years of argument. Its architect died before it was completed. Contemporary critics sometimes thought it ugly or dishonest. One of its major transport features was so unpopular that it closed. Its original steam machinery became obsolete, and the great commercial port it was designed around disappeared.\n\nYet almost everything essential worked. Tower Bridge successfully reconciled road traffic with shipping, wrapped advanced engineering in architecture capable of standing beside the Tower of London, and created a structure robust enough to continue performing its original mechanical trick more than 130 years later.\n\nThe most interesting way to look at it, then, is not as London's imitation medieval castle. It is a gigantic Victorian machine that became so familiar we stopped noticing the machine.","figure":{"src":"/img/own-tower-bridge.jpg?v=8462663e","thumb":"/img/own-tower-bridge-480.jpg?v=b557d989","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Tower Bridge from the north bank, its towers and high walkway above the river","caption":"From the north bank on a clear morning."},"figures":null,"from":"museums/tower-bridge","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":7,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/tower-bridge/"},{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tower-bridge/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/tower-bridge/"},{"name":"Harry Potter","href":"/harry-potter/tower-bridge/"}],"maps_q":"Tower Bridge, Bermondsey, SE1 2LY, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":null,"near_all":[{"n":"Girl with a Dolphin","s":"girl-with-a-dolphin","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":138},{"n":"Bridge Theatre","s":"bridge-theatre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":207},{"n":"WatchHouse","s":"watchhouse","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":217}],"near_same":[{"s":"tower-of-london","m":297},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":427},{"s":"sky-garden","m":853},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":982},{"s":"borough-market","m":1034},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":1531}]},{"slug":"natural-history-museum","name":"Natural History Museum","area":"South Kensington","address":"Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD","station":"South Kensington","walk":4,"lat":51.496455,"lng":-0.176022,"hours":[[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5]],"hours_raw":"10:00-17:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nhm.ac.uk/","instagram":"natural_history_museum","attrs":[],"osm":"way/24436446","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Dinosaurs, a blue whale hanging over the main hall, and a building carved all over with animals. Free, though there is a security queue outside and it is longest in the school holidays.","note":"The Natural History Museum began as the natural history half of the British Museum, which grew out of Sir Hans Sloane's collection of plants, skeletons and curiosities bought for the nation in 1753, and it was Richard Owen, the palaeontologist who coined the word dinosaur, who won it a home of its own. Alfred Waterhouse's building on Cromwell Road opened in 1881, faced inside and out in terracotta because the tiles shrugged off London soot, and every surface carries a modelled animal or plant, living species on the west side and extinct ones on the east. It has been called a cathedral of nature since it opened; it remained legally part of the British Museum until 1963 and kept that name until 1992.\n\nThe collection is about 80 million specimens, Darwin's among them, and the museum is as much a research institute as a show: the Darwin Centre's eight-storey Cocoon holds the insects and plants and lets you watch the scientists at work. In the great hall, now Hintze Hall, the cast of the Diplodocus that Andrew Carnegie sent in 1905, Dippy, gave way in 2017 to Hope, the real skeleton of a blue whale, diving from the ceiling. The dinosaur gallery, the earthquake room and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition draw the longest queues. Entry is free.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-natural-history-museum.jpg?v=57ab5f21","thumb":"/img/own-natural-history-museum-480.jpg?v=2aba25a6","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The Natural History Museum's terracotta towers against an orange sunset","caption":"Waterhouse's terracotta, at sunset."},"figures":null,"from":"museums/natural-history-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":8,"whats_on":[{"slug":"the-natural-history-museums-permanent-galleries","name":"The Natural History Museum's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/the-natural-history-museums-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"A blue whale overhead, a roaring T. rex, and an earthquake you can stand in.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","free","nature","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"visions-of-nature","name":"Visions of Nature","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/visions-of-nature/","verdict":"A mixed-reality headset trip a hundred years into a hopeful future.","runs":null,"types":["family","immersive","science"],"clue":["Immersive","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"jurassic-oceans-monsters-of-the-deep","name":"Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/jurassic-oceans-monsters-of-the-deep/","verdict":"Pliosaurs, ichthyosaurs and the mosasaur, and you get to touch a fossil poo.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-22","to":"2027-01-03"},"types":["exhibition","family","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"wildlife-photographer-of-the-year","name":"Wildlife Photographer of the Year","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year/","verdict":"A hundred new photographs of the natural world, in a darkened, contemplative hang.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-16","to":"2027-07-11","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["exhibition","photography","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/"},{"name":"Architecture","href":"/architecture/natural-history-museum/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/natural-history-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-kensington","name":"South Kensington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"The Clockmakers' Museum","s":"the-clockmakers-museum","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":105},{"n":"Institut fran\u00e7ais du Royaume-Uni","s":"institut-francais-du-royaume-uni","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":217},{"n":"Cine Lumiere","s":"cine-lumiere","c":"cinemas","cn":"Cinemas","m":228}],"near_same":[{"s":"science-museum","m":105},{"s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","m":275},{"s":"hyde-park","m":1433},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":2336},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":2360},{"s":"portobello-road","m":2656}]},{"slug":"tate-modern","name":"Tate Modern","area":"Bankside","address":"Bankside, SE1 9TG","station":"London Blackfriars","walk":5,"lat":51.507429,"lng":-0.099386,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,21.0],[10.0,21.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Su-Th 10:00-18:00; Fr-Sa 10:00-21:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern","instagram":"tate","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/24642569","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Modern art in a power station facing St Paul's across the river, with a turbine hall the full height of the building. Free; the big exhibitions are ticketed.","note":"Tate Modern holds the nation's international modern and contemporary art, everything from 1900 onwards, and it lives in Bankside Power Station, built by Giles Gilbert Scott between 1947 and 1963 directly across the river from St Paul's and shut down in 1981. Refused protection and marked for demolition, it was saved when the Tate chose it in 1994; Herzog & de Meuron's \u00a3134 million conversion kept the brick shell, the 99-metre chimney and the Turbine Hall, and added the two-storey glass box on the roof. It opened on 11 May 2000 and drew 5.25 million people in its first year, twice what all three existing Tates had managed together.\n\nThe Turbine Hall is the heart of it: a single space the full length and six-storey height of the building, where one artist a year is commissioned to fill it. The collection displays on the floors either side are free and hung by theme rather than date. In 2016 the Switch House, the southern third of the power station, became a ten-storey brick tower, now the Blavatnik Building, standing over the old oil tanks, which are used for performance and film; Level 10 at the top of it is a free viewing gallery over the river. In 2025 four and a half million people came, more than to any other art gallery in Britain.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/tate-modern.jpg?v=cadbf674","thumb":"/img/tate-modern-480.jpg?v=f017f793","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Tate Modern from across the Thames: the long brick power station and its single chimney","caption":"The power station from the north bank.","credit":"Photo by Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tate_Modern_-_Bankside_Power_Station.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"art/tate-modern","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":9,"whats_on":[{"slug":"gathering-ground","name":"Gathering Ground","href":"/museums/tate-modern/gathering-ground/","verdict":"Nine artists on the ecological crisis, free, in a former power station.","runs":{"to":"2027-03-07"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"tate-moderns-permanent-galleries","name":"Tate Modern's permanent galleries","href":"/art/tate-modern/tate-moderns-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Matisse, Picasso and Rothko for free, in a power station the size of a cathedral.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"julio-le-parc-light-colour-action","name":"Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action.","href":"/museums/tate-modern/julio-le-parc-light-colour-action/","verdict":"Seven decades of kinetic light works that only finish when you walk into them.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-08","to":"2027-05-03"},"types":["art","exhibition","immersive"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"frida-the-making-of-an-icon","name":"Frida: The Making of an Icon","href":"/museums/tate-modern/frida-the-making-of-an-icon/","verdict":"Thirty Kahlo paintings, her clothes and jewellery, and the two hundred objects that made her a brand.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-25","to":"2027-01-03"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"ana-mendieta","name":"Ana Mendieta","href":"/museums/tate-modern/ana-mendieta/","verdict":"The Silueta series and newly restored films, in the first UK retrospective for over a decade.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-14","to":"2027-01-17"},"types":["art","exhibition","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"light-and-magic-the-birth-of-art-photography","name":"Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography","href":"/museums/tate-modern/light-and-magic-the-birth-of-art-photography/","verdict":"Two hundred rare prints by eighty pictorialists, from Seoul to Cape Town.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-14","to":"2027-02-21"},"types":["art","exhibition","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"monet-painting-time","name":"Monet: Painting Time","href":"/museums/tate-modern/monet-painting-time/","verdict":"Tate Modern's first Monet show, from the Gare Saint-Lazare to the water lilies.","runs":{"from":"2027-02-25","to":"2027-06-27"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"ink","name":"Ink","href":"/museums/tate-modern/ink/","verdict":"Eighty ink paintings from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan that modernised a tradition.","runs":{"from":"2027-04-22","to":"2027-08-30"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"baya","name":"Baya","href":"/museums/tate-modern/baya/","verdict":"The Algerian painter who impressed Picasso and Breton, in her first UK solo show.","runs":{"from":"2027-06-10","to":"2027-10-17"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"nalini-malani","name":"Nalini Malani","href":"/museums/tate-modern/nalini-malani/","verdict":"Nearly two hundred works across six decades from the Mumbai artist of Partition.","runs":{"from":"2027-07-01","to":"2028-01-09"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"lynda-benglis","name":"Lynda Benglis","href":"/museums/tate-modern/lynda-benglis/","verdict":"The latex pours and Day-Glo floors that rewrote what sculpture could be.","runs":{"from":"2027-09-30","to":"2028-03-05"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"edvard-munch","name":"Edvard Munch","href":"/museums/tate-modern/edvard-munch/","verdict":"The Frieze of Life and Munch's soul paintings, seen through film.","runs":{"from":"2027-11-11","to":"2028-04-23"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tate-modern/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/tate-modern/"},{"name":"Architecture","href":"/architecture/tate-modern/"}],"maps_q":"Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG, London","in_area":{"slug":"southwark","name":"Southwark & Bankside"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Bankside Gallery","s":"bankside-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":148},{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe guided tour","s":"shakespeares-globe-guided-tour","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":168},{"n":"Kirkaldy Testing Museum","s":"kirkaldy-testing-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":220}],"near_same":[{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":176},{"s":"borough-market","m":660},{"s":"st-pauls-cathedral","m":714},{"s":"sky-garden","m":1177},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":1245},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":1254}]},{"slug":"buckingham-palace","name":"Buckingham Palace","area":"Victoria","address":"SW1A 1AA","station":"Victoria","walk":6,"lat":51.500834,"lng":-0.142658,"hours":[[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-17:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.rct.uk/visit/the-state-rooms-buckingham-palace","hours_short":"State Rooms open 9 July to 27 September; the forecourt and the balcony view all year","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Timed tickets from the Royal Collection Trust for the summer opening; the Changing of the Guard has its own listing.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/visit/the-state-rooms-buckingham-palace","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/5208404","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The King's official home, and the balcony the royal family appears on. The gates and the guard are free all year; the rooms inside open for about ten weeks each summer, on a booked ticket.","note":"Victoria was the first monarch to live here and the balcony appearance was hers, in 1851; since then it has carried VE Day with Churchill between the King and Queen, the 1953 coronation with a new Queen in the crown, the kiss of 2011 and, in 2022, a four-year-old Prince Louis with his hands over his ears. The Crown's Buckingham Palace is mostly Lancaster House round the corner, but the real events happened here: Michael Fagan sat on the Queen's bed in 1982, the flag stayed absent in the week after Diana's death until the palace gave way, and the flowers reached the railings. The State Rooms open for ten weeks each summer; the rest of the year the railings are the visit, and the Royal Standard tells you whether the King is in.","note_links":null,"reading":"Buckingham Palace looks as though it must have been the centre of the British monarchy for centuries. In fact, it is a surprisingly recent palace. It did not become the sovereign's principal London residence until Queen Victoria moved in in 1837, and the famous fa\u00e7ade seen from the Mall is younger still: it was completed only in 1914. Queen Victoria never saw the front of Buckingham Palace that is now so strongly associated with her and the monarchy she helped define.\n\nThe story begins not with a king, but with an aristocrat. A substantial house had occupied the site by the seventeenth century, but around 1703 John Sheffield, later Duke of Buckingham, replaced it with Buckingham House, one of the grandest private houses in London. It was a large but recognisably domestic building, with a central block and projecting wings, standing at what was then the edge of developed Westminster. The palace has grown enormously around it, but parts of this original house survive within the building today.\n\nThere is an even older royal relic outside. James I had attempted to establish a silk industry here in the early seventeenth century by planting thousands of mulberry trees. According to the Royal Collection, the project failed because black mulberries were planted rather than the white variety preferred by silkworms. One surviving mulberry tree from the plantation still grows in the palace garden. It is an improbable remnant of the site two centuries before Buckingham Palace existed.\n\nBuckingham House became royal in 1762 when George III acquired it as a private family residence for Queen Charlotte and their children. Significantly, it was not yet the official centre of the monarchy: that remained St James's Palace. Known as the Queen's House, Buckingham was intended to provide something closer to a home. George III commissioned Sir William Chambers to modernise it, while Robert Adam contributed sophisticated interiors for the Queen.\n\nThe transformation into a palace came with George IV. Few British monarchs spent money on architecture, furniture and decoration with quite his enthusiasm. In 1825 he commissioned John Nash to turn the relatively restrained Buckingham House into a royal palace capable of matching his ambitions. Nash expanded the central building and rebuilt the wings around a huge ceremonial forecourt. In its centre stood a newly designed triumphal gateway: the monument we now know as Marble Arch.\n\nThe result was theatrical even by royal standards. Nash had begun his career designing scenery, and something of the stage designer remained in his architecture. Inside, rooms progress dramatically into one another through columns, mirrors, gilding and richly coloured decoration. His Throne Room culminates in what is essentially a proscenium arch framing the throne, while the 47-metre Picture Gallery was created as a magnificent setting for George IV's collection of paintings.\n\nGeorge IV's taste, however, was considerably more impressive than his financial restraint. By 1828 Nash had spent \u00a3496,169 on the project and costs were far beyond what had been expected. George died in 1830 without ever living in his new palace, and Nash was subsequently dismissed. Edward Blore was brought in to finish the building more economically. George's successor William IV disliked Buckingham Palace sufficiently that he continued living at Clarence House. After the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834, he even offered the unfinished palace to Parliament as a replacement. The offer was declined.\n\nIt was therefore an eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria who finally turned Buckingham Palace into the home of the sovereign. She moved in shortly after becoming Queen in 1837, against advice that she should wait at Kensington Palace while the building was made ready. For the first time, Buckingham Palace became not merely a royal house but the working centre of the monarchy.\n\nIt soon became apparent that the enormous-looking palace was not enormous enough. Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 and their rapidly growing family had to coexist with courtiers, servants, offices and the elaborate entertaining expected of the court. In 1845 Victoria complained to Prime Minister Robert Peel about the \"total want of accommodation\" and the absence of a room large enough for major balls and concerts. The solution fundamentally changed the appearance of the palace.\n\nEdward Blore built an entirely new eastern wing across the open side of Nash's forecourt, turning the palace into the quadrangle it remains today. In doing so he displaced Marble Arch, which was removed in 1851 and reconstructed beside Hyde Park. Much of the money for the new wing came from selling George IV's extravagant Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and some of the Pavilion's contents came back to London. Behind Buckingham Palace's restrained classical exterior are therefore unexpectedly exotic rooms filled with Chinese and Chinese-inspired furniture, porcelain pagodas and fantastical objects created for George IV's oriental palace by the sea.\n\nPrince Albert also suggested something that would become perhaps the palace's most important architectural feature: a balcony at the centre of the new fa\u00e7ade. Royal appearances there began in Victoria's reign; she watched soldiers leave for the Crimean War and later welcomed them back. The balcony was a remarkably effective piece of royal theatre. The monarch could remain physically separated and elevated above the crowd while simultaneously appearing accessible to it. That tension between distance and visibility remains central to the function of Buckingham Palace today.\n\nThe palace continued to expand. James Pennethorne added the great Ballroom and associated rooms in the 1850s, giving Victoria the enormous ceremonial space she had asked for. The interiors were considered remarkably fashionable: the architectural journal *The Builder* went so far as to call Buckingham Palace the \"Headquarters of Taste\". Yet the flourishing court came abruptly to an end after Albert died in 1861. Victoria withdrew from much of London social life and spent long periods at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral. By the end of her reign Buckingham Palace had begun to look neglected.\n\nHer son Edward VII reversed this. Buckingham Palace once again became the centre of an intensely social court, and many rooms acquired the white-and-gold decoration still visible today. Outside, an even greater transformation was taking place. The Victoria Memorial, the Mall and the monumental gates around the palace were conceived as a vast memorial to the previous reign. Sir Aston Webb helped turn the area into the piece of imperial urban theatre familiar today: a great ceremonial route running from Admiralty Arch towards the palace, terminating in the gilded figure of Victory above the Victoria Memorial.\n\nAnd this created a problem. Blore's nineteenth-century palace front was faced in Caen stone which had darkened and deteriorated in London's polluted atmosphere. Beside the brilliant white new memorial it looked particularly shabby. George V therefore commissioned Aston Webb to reface the entire east front in hard Portland stone. The work was carried out in 1913-14. Webb kept the basic arrangement, including Albert's balcony, but transformed its architectural character. The symmetrical, pale, rather stern elevation seen in almost every photograph of Buckingham Palace is consequently an Edwardian and early-Georgian remodelling of a Victorian wing attached to a Regency palace built around a Georgian house.\n\nThat complicated history is easier to understand from the garden. The western side of the palace still displays much more clearly the architecture of Nash's original scheme, with projecting pavilions, great Corinthian columns and a curved central bow. The familiar Mall fa\u00e7ade can therefore be slightly deceptive: what appears to be one immense, carefully planned classical palace is actually the result of successive monarchs and architects repeatedly extending and remodelling what they inherited.\n\nThe same is true inside. George IV's collections from Carlton House survive alongside furnishings brought from Brighton Pavilion; Victoria and Albert enlarged and altered the ceremonial rooms; Edward VII imposed his white-and-gold Edwardian taste; and Queen Mary later tried to recover some of the Regency character that had disappeared. Buckingham Palace is less a perfectly preserved historic interior than an accumulation of changing ideas about how monarchy should look.\n\nThe building has also repeatedly been forced to adapt to events far outside its gates. During the Second World War Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times. On 13 September 1940 a German aircraft approached along the Mall and dropped six bombs around the palace while George VI and Queen Elizabeth were inside. Bombs struck the forecourt, quadrangle, garden and the private chapel. The King recorded seeing two bombs fall only around thirty yards away before the explosions drove him and the Queen into the corridor.\n\nThe bombed chapel was never restored to its former use. In 1962 Prince Philip proposed turning its ruins into the Queen's Gallery, creating a public exhibition space for works from the Royal Collection. It was rebuilt again and enlarged in the early twenty-first century and is now the King's Gallery. A room destroyed during the Blitz therefore became one of the ways in which a famously inaccessible palace began gradually opening itself to the public.\n\nThat process accelerated dramatically in 1993. Following the catastrophic fire at Windsor Castle the previous year, Buckingham Palace's State Rooms began opening to paying visitors during the summer. The income became an important part of financing Windsor's restoration: ultimately around seventy per cent of the necessary revenue was raised through admissions to Buckingham Palace. What began partly as a response to a financial and political problem has since become a permanent part of London's cultural calendar.\n\nBehind all this ceremony is something that is remarkably easy to forget when standing among the crowds outside: the palace occupies the edge of a 39-acre walled garden, the largest private garden in London. Its lawns, lake and more than a thousand trees form an almost invisible landscape behind the building. From the Mall, Buckingham Palace presents itself as the formal termination of one of London's grandest avenues; from behind, it still has something of the character George III originally wanted from Buckingham House - a private retreat hidden from the city.\n\nThis is perhaps the most interesting way to understand Buckingham Palace. It was never designed in a single moment to become Britain's definitive royal palace. George III bought a family house. George IV tried to turn it into a spectacular work of art and nearly lost control of the cost. Victoria discovered it was impractical and built another wing. Edward VII revived it, George V replaced its public face, bombs destroyed parts of it, and later generations opened portions of it to millions of visitors.\n\nWhat now appears to be an immutable symbol of monarchy is actually one of London's great architectural improvisations.","figure":{"src":"/img/buckingham-palace.jpg?v=9b74dbe8","thumb":"/img/buckingham-palace-480.jpg?v=723d676a","width":1024,"height":670,"alt":"Buckingham Palace in London, England. taken by myself with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS lens","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buckingham_Palace,_London_-_April_2009.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"royal/buckingham-palace","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":10,"whats_on":[{"slug":"changing-the-guard","name":"Changing the Guard","href":"/museums/buckingham-palace/changing-the-guard/","verdict":"The New Guard marches up from Wellington Barracks, band and all.","runs":null,"types":["family","free","history"],"clue":["History"]},{"slug":"buckingham-palace-summer-opening","name":"Buckingham Palace Summer Opening","href":"/museums/buckingham-palace/buckingham-palace-summer-opening/","verdict":"Nineteen State Rooms, open to the public for eleven weeks a year.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-09","to":"2026-09-27","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/buckingham-palace/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/buckingham-palace/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/buckingham-palace/"}],"maps_q":"Buckingham Palace, SW1A 1AA, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"King's Gallery","s":"kings-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":112},{"n":"Italian Cultural Institute","s":"italian-cultural-institute","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":160},{"n":"Victoria Memorial","s":"victoria-memorial","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":181}],"near_same":[{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":24},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":940},{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":1068},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":1159},{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":1262},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":1277}]},{"slug":"changing-the-guard","name":"Changing the Guard","area":"St James's","address":"Buckingham Palace forecourt, SW1A 1AA","station":"Victoria","walk":6,"lat":51.500835,"lng":-0.143005,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.householddivision.org.uk/changing-the-guard-calendar","hours_short":"Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 11:00; extra days in summer and for events","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"The new guard leaves Wellington Barracks at 10:45; the forecourt railings are the view. Check the Household Division calendar, which changes with the weather and state visits.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.householddivision.org.uk/changing-the-guard-calendar","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Soldiers in red coats and bearskin hats handing the palace over to the next watch, with a band playing. Free, no ticket, and you need a place at the railings well before 11:00.","note":"The King's Guard, drawn from the five regiments of Foot Guards in scarlet and bearskins - or from a visiting unit, which is when the Gurkhas or the Navy appear - marches from Wellington Barracks with a band and hands over the palace in a forty-five-minute drill of shouted orders and presented arms. It is the most watched piece of royal ceremony there is, free, and best seen from the Victoria Memorial steps or the railings by ten-thirty. St James's Palace has its own smaller change in Friary Court beforehand, which is less crowded and closer.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/changing-the-guard.jpg?v=90864e49","thumb":"/img/changing-the-guard-480.jpg?v=783efd5d","width":1024,"height":613,"alt":"The Band of the Welsh Guards at Buckingham Palace","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Band_of_the_Welsh_Guards,_Buckingham_Palace,_London_-_Diliff.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"royal/changing-the-guard","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":11,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/museums/buckingham-palace/changing-the-guard/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/changing-the-guard/"}],"maps_q":"Changing the Guard, Buckingham Palace forecourt, SW1A 1AA, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"King's Gallery","s":"kings-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":116},{"n":"Italian Cultural Institute","s":"italian-cultural-institute","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":169},{"n":"Victoria Memorial","s":"victoria-memorial","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":201}],"near_same":[{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":24},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":964},{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":1092},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":1171},{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":1286},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":1296}]},{"slug":"victoria-and-albert-museum","name":"Victoria and Albert Museum","area":"South Kensington","address":"Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL","station":"South Kensington","walk":4,"lat":51.496911,"lng":-0.172115,"hours":[[10.0,17.75],[10.0,17.75],[10.0,17.75],[10.0,17.75],[10.0,22.0],[10.0,17.75],[10.0,17.75]],"hours_raw":"Sa-Th 10:00-17:45; Fr 10:00-22:00; Dec 24-26 off","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.vam.ac.uk/","instagram":"vamuseum","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"relation/29795","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Five thousand years of what people have made: clothes, jewellery, furniture, and halls of plaster casts of Europe's monuments. Free, with the exhibitions ticketed.","note":"The V&A is the world's largest museum of applied and decorative art and design, and it began as an argument about trade. The Government School of Design was founded in 1832 because ministers feared that badly designed British goods would lose their markets, and after the Great Exhibition of 1851 Henry Cole and Prince Albert turned its teaching collection into a museum in South Kensington, opened in 1857 in iron sheds so plain they were called the Brompton Boilers, with the first museum restaurant in the world. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of Aston Webb's grand front on Cromwell Road in 1899 and gave the museum its name; Edward VII opened it in 1909.\n\nThe collection spans five thousand years and 2.8 million objects across 145 galleries, seven miles of them: the Cast Courts, the Raphael Cartoons, the Jewellery Gallery, the Gilbert Collection, Islamic Middle East around the Ardabil Carpet, Europe 1600 \u2013 1815, Design 1900 \u2013 Now, Theatre and Performance and the Photography Centre, with medieval and Renaissance sculpture \u2014 the largest holding outside Italy \u2014 running through the middle of the building. Tipu's Tiger, a mechanical organ in the shape of a tiger eating a British soldier, and the Great Bed of Ware are both here somewhere. The John Madejski Garden, with its shallow oval pool, is where to stop when the scale defeats you. Entry is free, and since 2017 the porcelain-tiled courtyard of the Exhibition Road Quarter is the other way in. The Fashion Gallery is shut for redevelopment until autumn 2028.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/victoria-and-albert-museum.jpg?v=6b425008","thumb":"/img/victoria-and-albert-museum-480.jpg?v=1c1d9203","width":1024,"height":988,"alt":"The southern entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Victoria_%26_Albert_Museum_Entrance,_London,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/victoria-and-albert-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":12,"whats_on":[{"slug":"american-photographs","name":"American Photographs","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/american-photographs/","verdict":"How photography made America, from the V&A's own collection.","runs":{"to":"2027-05-16"},"types":["exhibition","free","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"bharti-kher-at-the-v-a","name":"Bharti Kher at the V&A","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/bharti-kher-at-the-v-a/","verdict":"Sari-fabric, resin and bronze figures set among the V&A's historic sculpture.","runs":{"to":"2027-01-24"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"dimensions-contemporary-chinese-studio-crafts","name":"Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/dimensions-contemporary-chinese-studio-crafts/","verdict":"How Chinese makers turned craft into art from the 1980s onward.","runs":{"to":"2027-09-26"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"free-daily-tours-of-the-v-a","name":"Free daily tours of the V&A","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/free-daily-tours-of-the-v-a/","verdict":"Volunteer-led introductions to the collection, several times a day, no booking.","runs":null,"types":["art","free","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","Art & design"]},{"slug":"lasting-impressions-women-printmakers-1900-now","name":"Lasting Impressions: Women Printmakers 1900 \u2013 Now","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/lasting-impressions-women-printmakers-1900-now/","verdict":"Kollwitz, Faith Ringgold, Laura Knight and the Guerrilla Girls, in prints.","runs":{"to":"2026-09-27"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"lost-music-venues","name":"Lost Music Venues","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/lost-music-venues/","verdict":"Fifty vanished gig venues from the 1980s to the 2010s, in flyers, posters and merch.","runs":{"to":"2027-10-30"},"types":["exhibition","free","music"],"clue":["Exhibition"]},{"slug":"rising-voices-contemporary-art-from-asia-australia-and-the-pacific","name":"Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/rising-voices-contemporary-art-from-asia-australia-and-the-pacific/","verdict":"Forty artists from the Asia Pacific, in a partnership with Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art.","runs":{"to":"2027-01-10"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"schiaparelli-fashion-becomes-art","name":"Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/schiaparelli-fashion-becomes-art/","verdict":"The Skeleton Dress, the Tears Dress, and a century of Schiaparelli in one room.","runs":{"to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["art","exhibition","fashion"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"the-v-as-permanent-galleries","name":"The V&A's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/the-v-as-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Seven miles of galleries, from Trajan's Column in plaster to the first iPhone.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"urushi-now-contemporary-japanese-lacquer","name":"Urushi Now: Contemporary Japanese Lacquer","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/urushi-now-contemporary-japanese-lacquer/","verdict":"A 7,000-year-old Japanese craft, as practised by artists working now.","runs":{"to":"2027-04-30"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"golden-threads-dress-from-saudi-arabia","name":"Golden Threads: Dress from Saudi Arabia","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/golden-threads-dress-from-saudi-arabia/","verdict":"Gold-threaded thobes that King Abdulaziz gave to an ambassador's daughter in the 1940s.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-04","to":"2027-05-30"},"types":["exhibition","fashion","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"sun-artists-a-serial-of-artistic-photography","name":"Sun Artists: A Serial of Artistic Photography","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/sun-artists-a-serial-of-artistic-photography/","verdict":"The eight issues of an 1889 journal that argued photography was art.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-04","to":"2027-05-09"},"types":["exhibition","free","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"v-a-illustration-awards-2026","name":"V&A Illustration Awards 2026","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/v-a-illustration-awards-2026/","verdict":"The year's best illustration, from picture books to advertising, free for a month.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-04","to":"2026-10-04"},"types":["art","books","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"v-a-x-ldf-awakenings","name":"V&A x LDF: Awakenings","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/v-a-x-ldf-awakenings/","verdict":"The V&A's London Design Festival installations, scattered through the galleries.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-12","to":"2026-10-18"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"digital-design-weekend-2026","name":"Digital Design Weekend 2026","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/digital-design-weekend-2026/","verdict":"Thirty installations, live coding and arcade games across the V&A, free, first come first served.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-18","to":"2026-09-20","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["art","family","free","workshop"],"clue":["Make something","Art & design"]},{"slug":"freddie-mercury-splendid-things","name":"Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/freddie-mercury-splendid-things/","verdict":"A free display of what Freddie Mercury kept, from the Garden Lodge sale.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-24"},"types":["exhibition","fashion","free","music"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"constantinople-to-istanbul-one-city-two-empires","name":"Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/constantinople-to-istanbul-one-city-two-empires/","verdict":"Sixteen hundred years of one city, Byzantine and Ottoman, in the V&A's first show on it.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-07"},"types":["art","exhibition","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"punk-to-pop","name":"Punk to Pop","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/punk-to-pop/","verdict":"1972 to 1985: the do-it-yourself decade, in music and clothes.","runs":{"from":"2027-03-13"},"types":["exhibition","fashion","music"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"sculpture-in-clay","name":"Sculpture in Clay","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/sculpture-in-clay/","verdict":"British artists who picked up clay to break the rules of ceramics.","runs":{"from":"2027-05-29"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"chintz","name":"Chintz","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/chintz/","verdict":"Four centuries of the South Indian cotton that Europe coveted, copied and banned.","runs":{"from":"2027-09-18"},"types":["exhibition","fashion","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/victoria-and-albert-museum/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/victoria-and-albert-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-kensington","name":"South Kensington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"National Art Library","s":"national-art-library","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":35},{"n":"Brompton Oratory","s":"brompton-oratory","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":173},{"n":"Venchi Exhibition Road","s":"venchi-exhibition-road","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":244}],"near_same":[{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":275},{"s":"science-museum","m":290},{"s":"hyde-park","m":1246},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":2061},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":2085},{"s":"portobello-road","m":2819}]},{"slug":"borough-market","name":"Borough Market","area":"Borough Market","address":"8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL","station":"London Bridge","walk":2,"lat":51.505588,"lng":-0.09031,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,18.0],[8.0,17.0],[10.0,14.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Th 10:00-17:00; Fr 10:00-18:00; Sa 08:00-17:00; Su 10:00-14:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://boroughmarket.org.uk/","instagram":"boroughmarket","attrs":[],"osm":"way/24282400","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A food market under the railway arches that has traded for a thousand years: cheese, oysters, bread and lunch eaten standing up. Free to walk through, and shoulder to shoulder from midday on a Saturday.","note":"Borough Market stands under and around the railway viaduct on the south side of London Bridge, and there has been trading on this ground for something close to a thousand years. It was a wholesale fruit and vegetable market until the 1990s, when the traders began selling to the public, and it has become the place London goes for what it cannot easily buy elsewhere: farmhouse cheese, shellfish opened in front of you, cured meat, bread and spices.\n\nHalf of it is cooked food. People order at a counter, eat standing in the aisle or on the steps of Southwark Cathedral beside it, and move on. Nothing needs booking and there is no charge to go in. It opens at 08:00 on a Saturday and that first hour is the only calm one; from midday on a Friday or Saturday it is a slow shuffle between the stalls.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/borough-market.jpg?v=27967447","thumb":"/img/borough-market-480.jpg?v=6fd410e6","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"A photograph of Borough Market.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jeremy Keith from Brighton & Hove, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borough_Market_(4701274756).jpg","thumb_width":480,"alt_generic":true},"figures":null,"from":"food-markets/borough-market","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":13,"also_in":[{"name":"Food Markets","href":"/food-markets/borough-market/"}],"maps_q":"Borough Market, 8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Bread Ahead","s":"bread-ahead","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":42},{"n":"The Colombian Coffee Company","s":"the-colombian-coffee-company-borough-market","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":49},{"n":"The Leaky Cauldron, Stoney Street","s":"the-leaky-cauldron-stoney-street","c":"harry-potter","cn":"Harry Potter","m":66}],"near_same":[{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":547},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":632},{"s":"tate-modern","m":660},{"s":"sky-garden","m":786},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":922},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":1034}]},{"slug":"covent-garden-piazza","name":"Covent Garden","area":"Covent Garden","address":"The Piazza, Covent Garden, WC2E 8RF","station":"Covent Garden","walk":4,"lat":51.51061,"lng":-0.122436,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Street performers in the square, small shops under the glass roof of the old market building, and the Royal Opera House and the theatres in the streets around it. Free to wander.","note":"Covent Garden means the square as much as the building. Inigo Jones laid the piazza out in the 1630s as London's first, on the model of an Italian one, and it spent two centuries as the fruit and vegetable market for the whole city before that trade was moved out to Nine Elms in 1974. What was left is the market building of 1830, glass-roofed and full of small shops, with a lower courtyard where classical musicians play under licence and a portico outside where the street performers work to a crowd standing in a ring.\n\nThe reason to walk out of the square rather than stop in it is the quarter around it: the Royal Opera House backs onto the piazza, there are more theatres within a few streets than anywhere else in the world, and the Transport Museum is on the east side. Free to wander, busy from late morning, and worst in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/area-covent-garden-lead3.jpg?v=95905733","thumb":"/img/area-covent-garden-lead3-480.jpg?v=d511d3a1","width":1280,"height":853,"thumb_width":500,"alt":"A flower-filled wooden barrow lettered Covent Garden standing on the paving under the market's green iron and glass roof, an Apple Market sign hanging above it and shoppers along the stone arcade beyond.","credit":"","source":"unsplash","photographer":"Philippe BONTEMPS","credit_url":"https://unsplash.com/photos/cart-with-plants-in-a-market-under-arched-roof-qHJ6ocEk2fY?utm_source=find.london&utm_medium=referral"},"figures":[{"src":"/img/area-covent-garden.jpg?v=7918b6c1","thumb":"/img/area-covent-garden-480.jpg?v=fe029ad7","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Covent Garden's piazza at night from above, the market building lit and crowds crossing the cobbles","caption":"The piazza at night, from the Opera House terrace."},{"src":"/img/area-covent-garden-lead2.jpg?v=07c89540","thumb":"/img/area-covent-garden-lead2-480.jpg?v=506a0654","width":1280,"height":853,"thumb_width":500,"alt":"Inside Covent Garden Market: the glass-roofed arcade with lamps, caf\u00e9 tables and shoppers along the central aisle","caption":"The market hall of 1830, under its later glass roof.","credit":"Photo by Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Covent_Garden_Market,_London_-_DSC00666.jpg"},{"src":"/img/area-covent-garden-3.jpg?v=9aed019e","thumb":"/img/area-covent-garden-3-480.jpg?v=5e828d4f","width":1280,"height":848,"thumb_width":500,"alt":"The Cambridge Theatre on Seven Dials, its curved corner and name above the entrance","caption":"The Cambridge Theatre, Seven Dials.","credit":"Photo by Bert Seghers, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Theater-landscape.JPG"}],"from":"areas/covent-garden","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":14,"maps_q":"Covent Garden, The Piazza, Covent Garden, WC2E 8RF, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Voltaire's lodging, Maiden Lane","s":"voltaire","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":32},{"n":"Liszt Institute","s":"liszt-institute","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":32},{"n":"Sakurado","s":"sakurado-covent-garden","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":32}],"near_same":[{"s":"national-gallery","m":477},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":495},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":830},{"s":"london-eye","m":840},{"s":"british-museum","m":1015},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":1046}]},{"slug":"royal-observatory-greenwich","name":"Royal Observatory, Greenwich","area":"Greenwich","address":"Blackheath Avenue, SE10 8XJ","station":"Maze Hill","walk":9,"lat":51.477347,"lng":-0.001176,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00; Dec 24-26 off","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.rmg.co.uk/royal-observatory","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/268533448","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The line the world measures longitude from, marked across the courtyard so you can stand with a foot in either hemisphere. Ticketed, and the hill it sits on gives the long view back over the river.","note":"Charles II founded the observatory in 1675 for one practical reason. A ship could work out how far north it was from the height of the sun, but not how far east or west, and ships were being lost for want of it. The astronomers here were set to map the stars accurately enough that a navigator could read the sky as a clock. Wren designed the house on the hill, and it is named for John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, who spent forty years measuring the heavens from it.\n\nThe other answer came from a carpenter. John Harrison spent his life building clocks that would keep time at sea through damp, heat and the roll of a ship \u2014 if you know the time at Greenwich and the time where you are, the difference is your longitude \u2014 and his sea clocks are here, three of them still ticking. Outside, a red ball has dropped down its mast at exactly one o'clock every day since 1833, so that ships in the river could set their chronometers by it before sailing.\n\nGreenwich became the world's zero first by habit and then by vote: British charts were drawn from this meridian, most of the world's shipping used British charts, and a conference in Washington made it official in 1884. That is why the line in the courtyard is where east meets west, and why the world's time zones are counted from a hill in south-east London. The astronomers left for darker skies in the 1950s; the buildings, the instruments, the clocks and the view stayed.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/royal-observatory-greenwich.jpg?v=47c6ae97","thumb":"/img/royal-observatory-greenwich-480.jpg?v=c81eab0d","width":1024,"height":661,"alt":"Flamsteed House at the Royal Observatory, the red time ball on its turret","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jakub Ha\u0142un, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flamsteed_House,_Royal_Observatory,_Greenwich,_London,_20260719_0921_4494.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/royal-observatory-greenwich","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":15,"whats_on":[{"slug":"lunar-tours","name":"Lunar Tours","href":"/museums/royal-observatory-greenwich/lunar-tours/","verdict":"The Observatory's history of watching, mapping and reaching the Moon, plus a mirror Moon to touch.","runs":null,"types":["family","science","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"royal-observatory-treasures-tour","name":"Royal Observatory Treasures Tour","href":"/museums/royal-observatory-greenwich/royal-observatory-treasures-tour/","verdict":"An hour with the astronomers who fixed time and longitude, on the hill where they did it.","runs":null,"types":["history","science","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"the-royal-observatorys-permanent-galleries","name":"The Royal Observatory's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/royal-observatory-greenwich/the-royal-observatorys-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Stand on the Prime Meridian, and see the clocks that solved longitude.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","heights","history","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"mirror-moon","name":"Mirror Moon","href":"/museums/royal-observatory-greenwich/mirror-moon/","verdict":"Luke Jerram's lunar surface, close enough to touch.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["art","immersive","science"],"clue":["Immersive","Science & nature"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/royal-observatory-greenwich/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/royal-observatory-greenwich/"}],"maps_q":"Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Blackheath Avenue, SE10 8XJ, London","in_area":{"slug":"greenwich","name":"Greenwich"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Prime Meridian","s":"prime-meridian","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":56},{"n":"Greenwich Park","s":"greenwich-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":145},{"n":"Ranger's House (Wernher Collection)","s":"rangers-house-wernher-collection","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":436}],"near_same":[{"s":"cutty-sark-museum","m":844},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":6016},{"s":"tower-of-london","m":6308},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":6429},{"s":"sky-garden","m":6869},{"s":"borough-market","m":6924}]},{"slug":"science-museum","name":"Science Museum","area":"South Kensington","address":"Frankland Road, Brompton, SW7 2AD","station":"South Kensington","walk":5,"lat":51.497397,"lng":-0.176231,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/27765411","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Steam engines, the Apollo 10 capsule that flew round the Moon, and floors built for children to push and pull things. Free; the simulators and the cinema are paid.","note":"This is Britain's national museum of science and industry, and it began as the leftovers of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The machinery nobody wanted to send home was gathered in South Kensington beside the art that became the V&A, and the two shared one museum until 1909, when the science collections were given a building and a name of their own. The present galleries on Exhibition Road opened between 1919 and 1928, and the Wellcome Wing behind them in 2000.\n\nThe ground floor tells the story of steam. The Energy Hall holds the oldest surviving James Watt beam engine and, rebuilt piece by piece, Watt's own attic workshop, sealed at his death in 1819 and moved here with its 8,300 objects when his house was pulled down in 1927. Beyond it stands the Apollo 10 command module, which orbited the Moon thirty-one times in May 1969 on the rehearsal for the landing, and Making the Modern World lines up Puffing Billy, the oldest surviving steam locomotive, Crick and Watson's model of DNA and a V-2 rocket. Stephenson's Rocket, for years the star of this floor, left for the National Railway Museum in York in 2019.\n\nUpstairs are the newer galleries: Medicine, five rooms and more than three thousand objects, much of it from Henry Wellcome's collection; Mathematics, in a gallery shaped by Zaha Hadid's studio around a 1929 aeroplane; Information Age, where the Queen sent her first tweet at the opening in 2014; and Flight, with the Vickers Vimy in which Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic in 1919. Entry is free. Wonderlab, the hands-on gallery of live experiments, and the IMAX cinema are the parts that sell tickets.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/science-museum.jpg?v=d9350305","thumb":"/img/science-museum-480.jpg?v=f0966f44","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The Science Museum, London, as seen from Exhibition Road","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Shadowssettle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Science_Museum,_Exhibition_Road_(cropped).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/science-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":16,"whats_on":[{"slug":"astronights","name":"Astronights","href":"/museums/science-museum/astronights/","verdict":"Sleep under the rockets: the Science Museum's sleepover for seven-to-elevens.","runs":null,"types":["family","immersive","science"],"clue":["Immersive","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"smithsonian-starstruck-an-immersive-experience","name":"Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience","href":"/museums/science-museum/smithsonian-starstruck-an-immersive-experience/","verdict":"Forty minutes in virtual reality among galaxies, black holes and supernovas.","runs":null,"types":["immersive","science"],"clue":["Immersive","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"the-science-museums-permanent-galleries","name":"The Science Museum's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/science-museum/the-science-museums-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Watt's workshop, the Apollo 10 capsule and a V-2 rocket, free on seven floors.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","free","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"bubble-explorers","name":"Bubble Explorers","href":"/museums/science-museum/bubble-explorers/","verdict":"A family show about bubbles, which is more science than it sounds.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-12","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["family","science"],"clue":["Science & nature"]},{"slug":"power-up-evening-sessions","name":"Power Up evening sessions","href":"/museums/science-museum/power-up-evening-sessions/","verdict":"A hundred and sixty consoles, no children, and the games the daytime cannot show.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-17","to":"2026-12-10"},"types":["adults","games","late","science"],"clue":["Games","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"becoming-america-how-science-shaped-a-nation","name":"Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation","href":"/museums/science-museum/becoming-america-how-science-shaped-a-nation/","verdict":"A 1776 print of the Declaration, George III's microscope, and the science behind a new nation.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-23","to":"2027-04-25"},"types":["exhibition","free","history","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"horrible-science-cosmic-chaos","name":"Horrible Science: Cosmic Chaos","href":"/museums/science-museum/horrible-science-cosmic-chaos/","verdict":"The Horrible Science TV series as a walk-through solar system, with a villain to defeat.","runs":{"from":"2027-03-18","to":"2028-02-27"},"types":["exhibition","family","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/science-museum/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/science-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Science Museum, Frankland Road, Brompton, SW7 2AD, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-kensington","name":"South Kensington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"RCM Museum of Music","s":"rcm-museum-of-music","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":260},{"n":"Goethe-Institut London","s":"goethe-institut-london","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":282},{"n":"National Art Library","s":"national-art-library","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":292}],"near_same":[{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":105},{"s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","m":290},{"s":"hyde-park","m":1359},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":2331},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":2355},{"s":"portobello-road","m":2572}]},{"slug":"hyde-park","name":"Hyde Park","area":"Hyde Park","address":"Hyde Park, W2 2UH","station":"Lancaster Gate","walk":1,"lat":51.506841,"lng":-0.163765,"hours":[[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0],[5.0,24.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 05:00-24:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/hyde-park","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/hyde-park","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/372975520","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Three hundred and fifty acres of grass, trees and a lake in the middle of the city, with boats to hire and a place to swim. Free, open from 05:00 until midnight.","note":"Hyde Park is three hundred and fifty acres of open ground in the middle of London. Henry VIII took it from Westminster Abbey in 1536 to hunt deer in, Charles I let the public in about a century later, and the Serpentine, the lake down the middle, was made in the 1730s by damming a river that still runs beneath the park in a pipe.\n\nThere are rowing boats and pedalos for hire on the lake through the summer, and a roped-off stretch of open water where people swim. At the north-east corner, Speakers' Corner has been ground where anybody may stand up and address whoever stops since the 1870s, and there are still speakers there on a Sunday. Free, open from 05:00 until midnight, and wide enough that the middle of it is quiet on a busy afternoon.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/hyde-park.jpg?v=46b24428","thumb":"/img/hyde-park-480.jpg?v=ce02576a","width":1024,"height":387,"alt":"View of Hyde Park, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyde_Park_July_2015-1.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/hyde-park","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":17,"also_in":[{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/hyde-park/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/hyde-park/"}],"maps_q":"Hyde Park, W2 2UH, London","in_area":{"slug":"hyde-park-kensington-gardens","name":"Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Boating on the Serpentine","s":"boating-on-the-serpentine","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":145},{"n":"Reformers' Tree","s":"reformers-tree","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":302},{"n":"Serpentine Lido","s":"serpentine-lido","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":388}],"near_same":[{"s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","m":1246},{"s":"science-museum","m":1359},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":1433},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":1584},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":1606},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":2061}]},{"slug":"sky-garden","name":"Sky Garden","area":"Fenchurch Street","address":"1 Sky Garden Walk, EC3M 8AF","station":"Monument","walk":2,"lat":51.51127,"lng":-0.08354,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[11.0,21.0],[11.0,21.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Fr 10:00-18:00; Sa-Su 11:00-21:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-02","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://skygarden.london/","instagram":null,"attrs":["outdoor"],"osm":null,"types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A public garden under a glass dome thirty-five floors up, with the City spread out underneath. Free, but you have to book a slot online and the good ones go within hours of release.","note":"The top of the Walkie Talkie, given over to a public garden because the planners insisted on it: terraced ferns and palms under a glass shell, an open-air terrace facing south over the river, and the whole City laid out below. Free, but you must book a slot - they release them weekly, about three weeks ahead, and the good times go. Bars and restaurants up there keep longer hours than the garden.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/sky-garden","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":18,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/sky-garden/"}],"maps_q":"Sky Garden, 1 Sky Garden Walk, EC3M 8AF, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Rosslyn Coffee","s":"rosslyn-leadenhall-market","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":104},{"n":"Konditor","s":"konditor-cullum-street","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":113},{"n":"Curators Coffee","s":"curators-coffee","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":114}],"near_same":[{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":162},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":545},{"s":"tower-of-london","m":611},{"s":"borough-market","m":786},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":853},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":1000}]},{"slug":"churchill-war-rooms","name":"Churchill War Rooms","area":"Whitehall","address":"King Charles Street, SW1A 2AQ","station":"Westminster","walk":4,"lat":51.502209,"lng":-0.129251,"hours":[[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 09:30-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/197206542","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The underground rooms Britain was run from during the Second World War, locked in 1945 and left as they stood. Ticketed, and worth booking: the queue forms on the pavement outside.","note":"These are the rooms under the Treasury from which Britain ran the Second World War. Converted from a basement in 1938, when the Air Ministry expected bombing to cause 200,000 casualties a week in London, they came into use on 27 August 1939, a week before war was declared, and the War Cabinet met here 115 times, the last on 28 March 1945. Churchill, taking over in May 1940, looked at the Cabinet Room and said: \u201cThis is the room from which I will direct the war.\u201d A slab of concrete up to five feet thick was poured over the complex during the Blitz and it grew to three times its size; staff slept in dormitories under it, the ceilings were low, the lavatories were chemical and the mice were everywhere.\n\nWhen Japan surrendered in August 1945 the doors were locked and the rooms left as they stood, so what you walk through is not a reconstruction. The Map Room, staffed round the clock by officers of all three services to brief the King and the Prime Minister each morning, still has its pins in the charts. The Transatlantic Telephone Room, behind a door with a lavatory lock so that staff took it for the Prime Minister's private toilet, connected Churchill to Roosevelt through a scrambler so large it filled a basement under Selfridges. His bedroom is here, though he rarely slept in it. The rooms opened to the public in 1984, and a museum of Churchill's ninety years was added beside them in 2005.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/churchill-war-rooms.jpg?v=464a8152","thumb":"/img/churchill-war-rooms-480.jpg?v=c73a1678","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"The Cabinet War Rooms' entrance","caption":"","credit":"Photo by en:User:Jdhowens90, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cabinet_war_rooms.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/churchill-war-rooms","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":19,"whats_on":[{"slug":"the-secrets-of-churchills-war-rooms-tour","name":"The Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms tour","href":"/museums/churchill-war-rooms/the-secrets-of-churchills-war-rooms-tour/","verdict":"An hour in the bunker before the public are let in, with a guide and the run of it after.","runs":null,"types":["history","subterranean","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/churchill-war-rooms/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/churchill-war-rooms/"},{"name":"Secrets & Espionage","href":"/secrets/churchill-war-rooms/"}],"maps_q":"Churchill War Rooms, King Charles Street, SW1A 2AQ, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Robert Clive Statue","s":"robert-clive-statue","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":10},{"n":"Foreign Office & the former India Office","s":"foreign-office-the-former-india-office","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":114},{"n":"Supreme Court of the United Kingdom","s":"supreme-court-of-the-united-kingdom","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":215}],"near_same":[{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":337},{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":451},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":623},{"s":"national-gallery","m":743},{"s":"london-eye","m":850},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":925}]},{"slug":"shakespeares-globe","name":"Shakespeare's Globe","area":"Bankside","address":"21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT","station":"London Blackfriars","walk":6,"lat":51.508123,"lng":-0.097089,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/visit/opening-hours/","hours_short":"Tours daily; performances by ticket","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"The Globe Story and Tour runs every day. Box office 11:00-18:00 Monday to Friday, 10:00-18:00 Saturday, 10:00-17:00 Sunday; the shop 10:00-17:00 daily.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/1239793","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A working copy of Shakespeare's open-air theatre, built in oak and thatch. Tours by ticket all year; in summer you can stand in the yard for a play for \u00a35.","note":"The first Globe was raised in 1599 out of the timbers of an earlier theatre that Shakespeare's company had taken apart and carried across the river. It burned down in 1613 when a cannon fired during a performance set the thatch alight, was rebuilt, and was pulled down in 1644 after the Puritans closed the playhouses. Then there was nothing here for three hundred years.\n\nThis one is the work of Sam Wanamaker, an American actor who settled in London in the 1950s, found the site of the Globe marked by a plaque on a brewery wall, and spent the rest of his life raising the money to rebuild it. He founded the trust in 1970 and died in 1993, four years before it opened.\n\nIt is built as the original was: English oak cut and pegged together rather than nailed, and the only thatched roof London has allowed since the Great Fire of 1666. Eight hundred and seventy sit on hard benches around three tiers and seven hundred stand in the yard in front of the stage, in daylight, because there is no lighting rig. The actors can see every face and play to them, which is a different bargain from a dark auditorium. Beside it the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, opened in 2014, is a small indoor theatre lit by candles, of the kind Shakespeare's company used in winter.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-shakespeares-globe.jpg?v=d1ca52cc","thumb":"/img/own-shakespeares-globe-480.jpg?v=309aba21","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Shakespeare's Globe from Bankside, white walls, black timbers and a thatched roof","caption":"The rebuilt Globe from Bankside."},"figures":null,"from":"venues/shakespeares-globe","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":20,"whats_on":[{"slug":"much-ado-about-nothing","name":"Much Ado About Nothing","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/much-ado-about-nothing/","verdict":"The one where two people who cannot stand each other are tricked into love, outdoors.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-10","to":"2026-10-24"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"as-you-like-it","name":"As You Like It","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/as-you-like-it/","verdict":"Rosalind flees a powdered court for a Forest of Arden the company paints on stage as you watch.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-11","to":"2026-10-25"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"julius-caesar","name":"Julius Caesar","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/julius-caesar/","verdict":"The assassination, by candlelight, in a room built from seventeenth-century drawings.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-06","to":"2027-02-14"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/"},{"name":"Literary London","href":"/literary/shakespeares-globe/"}],"maps_q":"Shakespeare's Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT, London","in_area":{"slug":"southwark","name":"Southwark & Bankside"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe guided tour","s":"shakespeares-globe-guided-tour","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":8},{"n":"Rose Theatre Exhibition","s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":150},{"n":"The Tate Modern Tour","s":"the-tate-modern-tour","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":176}],"near_same":[{"s":"tate-modern","m":176},{"s":"borough-market","m":547},{"s":"st-pauls-cathedral","m":658},{"s":"sky-garden","m":1000},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":1068},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":1105}]},{"slug":"nelsons-column","name":"Trafalgar Square & Nelson's Column","area":"Covent Garden","address":"Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN","station":"Charing Cross","walk":1,"lat":51.507759,"lng":-0.12793,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/150920358","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The square London gathers in, with Nelson on a column above it, four bronze lions to climb on and fountains between them. Free and never closed.","note":"The square is the symbolic heart of London, and the two are one thing: Charles Barry's terrace and steps below the National Gallery, and in the paved space beneath them William Railton's column of Devon granite, raised in 1840-43, with Edward Hodges Baily's five-metre Nelson on top and four bronze reliefs of his battles round the base, cast from captured French guns. Landseer's lions came in 1867, twenty years late, and have been climbed on ever since; Lutyens rebuilt the fountains in the 1930s as memorials to Jellicoe and Beatty; and the fourth plinth, empty since Barry drew it, has held a changing commission since 1999. Distances to London are measured from the Charles I at the square's southern edge, and this is where the city has gathered to celebrate and to protest since the Chartists.","note_links":null,"reading":"Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column seem so inseparable that it is easy to assume they were conceived together: a great national square built around a monument to Britain's most famous admiral. In reality, the square was already being created before anyone decided to put Nelson in it, its principal architect did not want the column there, and the monument itself took almost a quarter of a century to acquire the bronze lions that now seem essential to its design.\n\nThe site was not originally a square at all. For centuries much of it was occupied by the King's Mews, the royal stables at Charing Cross. These became redundant when George IV moved the royal stabling to the new Royal Mews beside Buckingham Palace in the 1820s, releasing an exceptionally prominent piece of land at the meeting point of Westminster, the Strand and the West End.\n\nIts redevelopment formed part of John Nash's much larger plan to remake Georgian London. Nash was creating a grand route from the new Regent's Park through Regent Street towards the royal and governmental districts around Pall Mall. The open space at Charing Cross became an important junction in this scheme, connected westwards through the newly created Pall Mall East and eastwards towards the Strand. The name Trafalgar Square was already in use by around 1830, even though the square itself would not be formally completed for more than a decade.\n\nThe name commemorated the Battle of Trafalgar of 21 October 1805, when the Royal Navy defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets off the Spanish coast. Horatio Nelson was already Britain's most celebrated naval commander; his death during the victory transformed him into something approaching a national martyr. His body was brought home aboard HMS Victory, lay in state at Greenwich and was carried in an extraordinary state funeral to St Paul's Cathedral. More than 15,000 people passed through the Painted Hall at Greenwich during only three days of lying-in-state.\n\nYet the square was not initially planned around him. Its northern side acquired another national institution first. Parliament chose the site for the National Gallery partly because of its unusually central position: it could be reached in carriages by wealthy residents of the West End while remaining accessible on foot to poorer Londoners from the east. William Wilkins's National Gallery opened in 1838, six years before Trafalgar Square itself officially opened.\n\nThe square as we recognise it is largely the work of Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament. The natural ground slopes noticeably southwards towards Whitehall, so Barry created a raised terrace in front of the National Gallery, retaining walls and steps, and levelled the great paved space below. The architectural effect remains important today: the Gallery is raised above the square while Nelson's Column stands out against it from the south.\n\nBarry was less enthusiastic about the enormous monument somebody else proposed putting in the middle of his composition. A public campaign for a London memorial to Nelson resulted in architectural competitions beginning in 1838. William Railton's winning design was an immense Corinthian column. Barry objected that it would overpower the National Gallery and undermine the setting he was creating for it, but work on the column had already begun. Trafalgar Square's defining object was therefore inserted into its architect's design against his wishes.\n\nThe resulting monument is deliberately overwhelming. Nelson stands more than fifty metres above the square, his five-metre-high stone figure by Edward Hodges Baily supported by a huge fluted granite column and bronze Corinthian capital. At street level Nelson is almost impossible to examine properly: the sculpture works less as a portrait than as a silhouette, permanently visible above the surrounding buildings. He faces south towards Whitehall and the traditional centre of British government.\n\nThe details are concentrated around the enormous pedestal below. Four bronze reliefs narrate Nelson's great battles: Cape St Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen and finally Trafalgar, where the subject becomes not simply victory but Nelson's death. The southern relief by John Edward Carew shows the mortally wounded admiral being carried below deck aboard Victory. Nelson had been hit by a musket ball fired from the French ship Redoutable at about 1.30pm and died several hours later, knowing that his fleet had won.\n\nThe reliefs repay much closer inspection than the statue above. They present Nelson's achievements not through abstract symbols but through crowded scenes of sailors, ropes, guns, bodies and fighting. They were cast using bronze from captured French cannon, literally turning the weapons of Britain's enemy into the material of a British national monument. One figure on Carew's Trafalgar panel is a Black sailor or marine; research into the fleet shows that men from Africa and the wider African diaspora were indeed among those who fought at Trafalgar.\n\nSomething is conspicuously missing from early images of the completed column: the lions. Railton had always intended sculpture around the base, but the four enormous bronze animals did not arrive until 1867, more than twenty years after the column itself. Their designer, Edwin Landseer, was one of Victorian Britain's most celebrated animal painters rather than primarily a monumental sculptor. They were ultimately modelled and cast with the involvement of the sculptor Baron Marochetti.\n\nTheir scale is crucial. Without them the pedestal appears severe and disproportionately massive; the reclining lions spread the monument horizontally into the square and provide a visual transition between the human scale of visitors and the extraordinary verticality of the column. Today they are probably photographed almost as often as Nelson himself, despite being a distinctly later addition to his memorial.\n\nThe fountains are another element that appears original but is not quite what it seems. Barry introduced two fountain basins during the 1840s. One reason was practical: the huge expanse of paving created glare and heat. Government officials also saw an advantage in occupying more of the square with water, reducing the space available for the enormous political crowds that London's new public square was already capable of attracting.\n\nThe fountains visible today are largely twentieth-century replacements. Sir Edwin Lutyens redesigned their centrepieces in 1937-39 as memorials to First World War admirals David Beatty and John Jellicoe, with sculpture by Charles Wheeler and William McMillan. Trafalgar Square consequently contains layers of naval commemoration from two different centuries: Nelson towering over the Napoleonic Wars at its centre, with memorials to the commanders of the First World War embedded more discreetly into the surrounding landscape.\n\nThere are older and stranger layers too. Immediately south of the square, almost lost among traffic, sits the equestrian statue of Charles I. It was cast in 1633, survived the Civil War and was erected at Charing Cross in 1674-75, on the site formerly occupied by the medieval Eleanor Cross. It therefore predates Trafalgar Square by roughly 170 years. Looking south from Nelson's Column you are effectively looking across two completely different traditions of British public monument: the Stuart king on horseback and, behind him in chronological terms, the Victorian cult of the national military hero.\n\nThe other statues reveal how the square accumulated rather than followed a single coherent plan. George IV sits on horseback in the north-east corner in a sculpture originally intended for Marble Arch. Generals Henry Havelock and Charles Napier occupy smaller plinths further south. And opposite George IV stands perhaps the square's most successful accident: an empty pedestal.\n\nCharles Barry designed this north-western plinth for an equestrian statue, generally intended to commemorate William IV. The money was never found and it remained empty for more than 150 years. From 1999 it instead began hosting temporary works of contemporary art. The Fourth Plinth programme has turned what was essentially a Victorian funding failure into one of the world's most visible spaces for new sculpture.\n\nThis produces an extraordinary contrast with Nelson. One corner of Trafalgar Square contains a nineteenth-century attempt to make a historical reputation permanent in granite and bronze; another deliberately changes every few years. Yinka Shonibare made that relationship explicit in 2010 when he placed *Nelson's Ship in a Bottle*, a model of HMS Victory with patterned textile sails, on the Fourth Plinth - using contemporary art to reconsider the naval, commercial and imperial history represented by the monument towering beside it.\n\nThe square itself has similarly acquired a meaning its designers could only partly have anticipated. Unlike many of London's older garden squares, Trafalgar Square was created as public space. Its proximity to Parliament and Whitehall rapidly made it an obvious place to demonstrate as well as celebrate. Chartists gathered here; unemployed workers and socialists did the same later in the century. In November 1887 attempts to prevent a political meeting culminated in the violent confrontation remembered as Bloody Sunday, in which police and soldiers fought demonstrators trying to enter the square.\n\nThat political role continued with Suffragette demonstrations, anti-war rallies, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament gatherings and later protests against apartheid. Yet exactly the same space became a place for victory celebrations, New Year's gatherings, sporting crowds and national ceremonies. Since 1947 Norway has sent London a Christmas tree for the square each year in gratitude for British support during the Second World War.\n\nEven the apparently historic physical relationship between Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery is surprisingly recent. Until 2003 a busy road ran along the northern side, separating the Gallery from the square. A major redesign pedestrianised this section and cut the broad central staircase through Barry's terrace wall. What now feels like the natural entrance from Trafalgar Square into the National Gallery is only just over twenty years old.\n\nTrafalgar Square is therefore much more than the setting for Nelson's Column. It began as a piece of Regency town planning on the site of royal stables, acquired a national art gallery, was remodelled by one of Victorian Britain's greatest architects, and then had an enormous monument inserted into it that its own designer did not want. The lions came decades later, the fountains were rebuilt a century later, one statue is older than the square itself and its most famous modern sculpture site exists because nobody could afford to fill a Victorian plinth.\n\nThat accidental quality is part of what makes the square successful. The original architecture celebrates monarchy, military commanders and national power, but the space between the monuments belongs to crowds. Trafalgar Square has repeatedly been occupied by people celebrating the state, protesting against it, feeding pigeons, listening to speeches, climbing on lions or simply sitting beside the fountains.\n\nNelson remains immovable above it all. Almost everything beneath him has continued to change.","figure":{"src":"/img/own-nelsons-column-2.jpg?v=3086f0e8","thumb":"/img/own-nelsons-column-2-480.jpg?v=b27c88fb","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Nelson's Column above Trafalgar Square's fountains on a clear day","caption":"The column and the fountains, on a clear morning."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-nelsons-column.jpg?v=c62f1da2","thumb":"/img/own-nelsons-column-480.jpg?v=9dddb40e","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Trafalgar Square at dusk, the National Gallery lit behind the fountains","caption":"The square at dusk, the gallery lit behind."}],"from":"monuments/nelsons-column","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":21,"also_in":[{"name":"Art","href":"/art/nelsons-column/"},{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/nelsons-column/"},{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/nelsons-column/"}],"maps_q":"Trafalgar Square & Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN, London","in_area":{"slug":"soho","name":"Soho"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Diwali on the Square","s":"diwali-on-the-square","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":29},{"n":"Charles I at Charing Cross","s":"charles-i-at-charing-cross","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":50},{"n":"Canada House Gallery","s":"canada-house-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":102}],"near_same":[{"s":"national-gallery","m":137},{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":495},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":505},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":623},{"s":"london-eye","m":904},{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":930}]},{"slug":"london-eye","name":"London Eye","area":"South Bank","address":"Riverside Building, County Hall, SE1 7PB","station":"Waterloo","walk":5,"lat":51.5033,"lng":-0.1196,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.londoneye.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A 135-metre wheel on the river, turning slowly enough to walk about inside the capsule while it goes round. Ticketed and timed, and cheaper booked online than at the door.","note":"The 135-metre wheel on the South Bank turns once every half hour, with thirty-two glass capsules and the whole of central London laid out from Parliament across the water to St Paul's and the City. Standard tickets from \u00a329, fast track from \u00a344; private capsules and champagne flights cost more. Closing time moves with the season, between 18:00 and 20:30.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-london-eye.jpg?v=42c0cea4","thumb":"/img/own-london-eye-480.jpg?v=abc1adf6","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The London Eye in thick fog, the Houses of Parliament faint across the river","caption":"A foggy morning, Parliament almost invisible across the river."},"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/london-eye","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":22,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/london-eye/"}],"maps_q":"London Eye, Riverside Building, County Hall, SE1 7PB, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-bank","name":"South Bank"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Thames Rockets","s":"thames-rockets","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":57},{"n":"South Bank Lion","s":"south-bank-lion","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":263},{"n":"Westminster Bridge","s":"westminster-bridge","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":291}],"near_same":[{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":563},{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":731},{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":840},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":850},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":904},{"s":"national-gallery","m":1001}]},{"slug":"camden-market","name":"Camden Market","area":"Camden Town","address":"Camden Lock Place, NW1 8AF","station":"Camden Town","walk":7,"lat":51.542378,"lng":-0.147195,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.camdenmarket.com/","instagram":"camdenmarketldn","attrs":[],"osm":"node/3608653828","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Stalls in old horse stables and along a canal: street food from everywhere, vintage clothes, boots and records. Free, and busiest all weekend.","note":"Camden Market is not one market but a run of them along the canal at Camden Lock, spreading back into the Victorian stables and horse hospital that served the railway goods yard behind. Trading began here on a Sunday in 1974 in a timber yard, and grew outward with the music that came with it: this is where the punks bought their boots in the 1970s and where Britpop drank in the 1990s, and the clothes stalls still trade on it.\n\nThe food is what is genuinely good now. The stalls in the West Yard and under the stables cook from almost everywhere, portions are cheap, and people eat standing by the water. Free to walk through, open every day, and packed from late morning at the weekend.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-camden-market.jpg?v=4a8fb0da","thumb":"/img/own-camden-market-480.jpg?v=a63cc0c9","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Camden Market's cobbled yard, trestle tables and parasols in front of the brick arches","caption":"The market yard, tables out between the arches."},"figures":null,"from":"food-markets/camden-market","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":23,"also_in":[{"name":"Food Markets","href":"/food-markets/camden-market/"}],"maps_q":"Camden Market, Camden Lock Place, NW1 8AF, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Roundhouse","s":"roundhouse","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":344},{"n":"Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream","s":"mamasons-dirty-ice-cream","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":384},{"n":"Camden High Street","s":"camden-high-street","c":"shopping","cn":"Shopping","m":394}],"near_same":[{"s":"british-museum","m":2924},{"s":"piccadilly-circus","m":3718},{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":3925},{"s":"national-gallery","m":3936},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":4073},{"s":"hyde-park","m":4114}]},{"slug":"cutty-sark-museum","name":"Cutty Sark Museum","area":"Greenwich","address":"43 King William Walk, SE10 9HT","station":"Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich","walk":2,"lat":51.482858,"lng":-0.009569,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark/plan-your-visit","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-06","hours_extra":"Last entry 16:15; closed 24, 25 and 26 December.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.rmg.co.uk/cuttysark","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/25608663","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The last of the tea clippers, built for speed under sail, and raised three metres off the ground so you can walk under the hull. Ticketed.","note":"Cutty Sark was built at Dumbarton in 1869 to carry tea home from China, at the very end of the age when the fastest way to move cargo was under sail. Clippers were built for speed and raced each other home, because the first tea of the season fetched the most money, and she was among the quickest of them. Steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal killed that trade within a few years, and she spent the rest of her working life bringing wool from Australia, on passages nothing else could match.\n\nShe is the last one left. At Greenwich she has been lifted three metres off the ground and glazed in underneath, so you can stand below the hull and see the shape that made her fast, with the ship's collection of figureheads in the shade around you. A fire in 2007 destroyed a great deal above deck, and much of what you walk on is replacement.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum.jpg?v=038f21df","thumb":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-480.jpg?v=ce09ec12","width":1024,"height":531,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The Cutty Sark's black hull and three masts standing above the glass roof of her dry berth","caption":"The clipper, held above her glazed dock."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-2.jpg?v=0af3a89e","thumb":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-2-480.jpg?v=39b32717","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The ship's hull seen from the hall beneath it, the glass canopy meeting the dock on both sides","caption":"Underneath the hull, in the space below the waterline."},{"src":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-3.jpg?v=e7815c00","thumb":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-3-480.jpg?v=85d8737b","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"Looking up at the bow from directly below, draught marks in Roman numerals along the stem","caption":"The bow from below, draught marks up the stem."},{"src":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-4.jpg?v=91ae55be","thumb":"/img/own-cutty-sark-museum-4-480.jpg?v=f6f4fa17","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Rows of painted ship's figureheads on stands under the glass roof of the undercroft","caption":"The Long John Silver collection of figureheads."}],"from":"museums/cutty-sark-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":24,"whats_on":[{"slug":"aboard-the-cutty-sark","name":"Aboard the Cutty Sark","href":"/museums/cutty-sark-museum/aboard-the-cutty-sark/","verdict":"The last tea clipper there is, lifted three metres so you can walk under her hull.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","history","water"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"niki-gorick-dock-life","name":"Niki Gorick: Dock Life","href":"/museums/cutty-sark-museum/niki-gorick-dock-life/","verdict":"Photographs of the docklands as they are now, under the last tea clipper.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["exhibition","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"shipkeeping-wednesdays","name":"Shipkeeping Wednesdays","href":"/museums/cutty-sark-museum/shipkeeping-wednesdays/","verdict":"Watch the ship being maintained, and ask the people doing it.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["family","history"],"clue":["History"]},{"slug":"rnli-day-at-the-cutty-sark","name":"RNLI Day at the Cutty Sark","href":"/museums/cutty-sark-museum/rnli-day-at-the-cutty-sark/","verdict":"Lifeboat crews and rescue demonstrations under the ship.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-26","to":"2026-09-26"},"types":["family","history"],"clue":["History"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/cutty-sark-museum/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/cutty-sark-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Cutty Sark Museum, 43 King William Walk, SE10 9HT, London","in_area":{"slug":"greenwich","name":"Greenwich"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Greenwich Market","s":"greenwich-market","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":146},{"n":"Dark Sugars Cocoa House","s":"dark-sugars-cocoa-house","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":213},{"n":"Old Royal Naval College","s":"old-royal-naval-college","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":223}],"near_same":[{"s":"royal-observatory-greenwich","m":844},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":5205},{"s":"tower-of-london","m":5503},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":5622},{"s":"sky-garden","m":6058},{"s":"borough-market","m":6134}]},{"slug":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","name":"Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew","area":"Kew","address":"Victoria Gate, Kew Road, Kew, TW9 3AE","station":"Kew Gardens","walk":5,"lat":51.478303,"lng":-0.290447,"hours":[[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-19:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/visit-kew-gardens/opening-and-closing-times","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens","instagram":"kewgardens","attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Three hundred acres of botanic garden with Victorian glasshouses and a walkway up among the treetops. Ticketed, and the glasshouses shut before the gardens do.","note":"A UNESCO World Heritage Site and a working scientific institution as much as a garden: the Palm House, the Temperate House - the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse anywhere - the Treetop Walkway out among the branches, and enough ground that a day is not really enough. The glasshouses shut before the gardens do, which catches people out on a long summer evening.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":25,"whats_on":[{"slug":"introduction-to-the-gardens","name":"Introduction to the Gardens","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/introduction-to-the-gardens/","verdict":"An hour with a Kew guide, twice a day, included in the ticket.","runs":null,"types":["free","nature","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour"]},{"slug":"henry-moore-monumental-nature","name":"Henry Moore: Monumental Nature","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/henry-moore-monumental-nature/","verdict":"Thirty monumental Moores among Kew's trees, the largest outdoor showing of him ever.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-09","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","family","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"monumental-botanical-art","name":"Monumental Botanical Art","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/monumental-botanical-art/","verdict":"Botanical painting in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, included with entry to the gardens.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-08","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"an-evening-of-moore","name":"An Evening of Moore","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/an-evening-of-moore/","verdict":"Henry Moore's sculptures in the gardens after the gates have shut.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-15","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["art","late","nature"],"clue":["Art & design"]},{"slug":"the-nash-sessions-jazz-cats-quartet","name":"The Nash Sessions: Jazz Cats Quartet","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/the-nash-sessions-jazz-cats-quartet/","verdict":"Swing and the Great American Songbook, in a glasshouse built for Buckingham Palace.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-24","to":"2026-09-24"},"types":["concert","jazz","music","nature"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"halloween-at-kew","name":"Halloween at Kew","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/halloween-at-kew/","verdict":"Dracula, the Headless Horseman and a new cursed tomb on an illuminated trail through the Gardens.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-16","to":"2026-11-01","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["family","nature","seasonal"],"clue":[]},{"slug":"christmas-at-kew","name":"Christmas at Kew","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/christmas-at-kew/","verdict":"The Gardens after dark as a mile of light, with a fairground and Father Christmas at the end.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-13","to":"2027-01-03","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["family","food_available","nature","seasonal"],"clue":[]}],"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"},{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"},{"name":"Literary London","href":"/literary/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"}],"maps_q":"Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Victoria Gate, Kew Road, Kew, TW9 3AE, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"The Original Maids of Honour","s":"the-original-maids-of-honour","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":308},{"n":"Kew Palace","s":"kew-palace","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":692},{"n":"Musical Museum","s":"musical-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":1079}],"near_same":[{"s":"portobello-road","m":7535},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":8176},{"s":"science-museum","m":8188},{"s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","m":8451},{"s":"hyde-park","m":9357},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":10512}]},{"slug":"hms-belfast","name":"HMS Belfast","area":"Southwark","address":"The Queen's Walk, SE1 2JH","station":"London Bridge","walk":4,"lat":51.506563,"lng":-0.081311,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-17:00; Dec 24-26 off","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/hms-belfast","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/5006061","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A Second World War cruiser moored in the river and kept as she was, with nine decks to climb down through. Ticketed, and the ladders between decks are steep.","note":"Belfast was launched in 1938, one of ten Town-class cruisers built for the Royal Navy: 187 metres of steel, twelve six-inch guns, a crew of about eight hundred, and the Navy's largest cruiser of her day. A German magnetic mine broke her back three months into the war and she spent three years under repair. She came back to escort the Arctic convoys to Russia, and in December 1943 she was one of the ships that caught the German battleship Scharnhorst in the dark off the North Cape and sank her. On D-Day she lay off the Normandy beaches firing at targets inland, and she was firing again in Korea in the early 1950s.\n\nShe was saved from the scrapyard in 1971 and moored here as part of the Imperial War Museum, and nothing was cleared out to make room for the visitors. You go down ladders into the boiler and engine rooms, through the mess decks where the crew slept and ate, into the shell rooms and magazines that fed the turrets, and up to the operations room and the bridge, with the engineering explained deck by deck. It is a steep, narrow, hot way to understand how eight hundred men lived inside a machine \u2014 and the best view of Tower Bridge is from her deck.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-hms-belfast.jpg?v=275c7cea","thumb":"/img/own-hms-belfast-480.jpg?v=439bec86","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"HMS Belfast's deck at sunset, the flag at the bow and the City upriver behind","caption":"From the deck at sunset, looking upriver."},"figures":null,"from":"museums/hms-belfast","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":26,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/hms-belfast/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/hms-belfast/"}],"maps_q":"HMS Belfast, The Queen's Walk, SE1 2JH, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":null,"near_all":[{"n":"The Navigators","s":"the-navigators","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":164},{"n":"Tower Subway","s":"tower-subway","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":266},{"n":"Peaky Blinders Underworld","s":"peaky-blinders-underworld","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":283}],"near_same":[{"s":"tower-of-london","m":389},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":427},{"s":"sky-garden","m":545},{"s":"borough-market","m":632},{"s":"leadenhall-market","m":703},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":1105}]},{"slug":"portobello-road","name":"Portobello Road","area":"Notting Hill","address":"Portobello Road, W11","station":"Notting Hill Gate","walk":9,"lat":51.513461,"lng":-0.202987,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A long street of antique stalls, arcades and painted houses in Notting Hill. Free; Saturday is the day the whole market runs, and it is full from early.","note":"Portobello Road runs north through Notting Hill, past terraces painted in flat pastel colours, and on a Saturday its whole length is a market. The antiques are at the south end: stalls in the street and covered arcades behind them selling silver, prints, cameras and jewellery, along with a great deal that is neither old nor valuable. Fruit and vegetables take over in the middle, and under the concrete motorway at the north end it turns to clothes, records and bric-a-brac.\n\nThe antiques trade started here after the Second World War and this is now one of the largest antiques markets in the world. It is free and there is nothing to book. Saturday is the only day all of it runs, and it fills early; on other days the stalls thin out and it is a street of shops and caf\u00e9s.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"shopping/portobello-road","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":27,"also_in":[{"name":"Shopping","href":"/shopping/portobello-road/"}],"maps_q":"Portobello Road, W11, London","in_area":{"slug":"notting-hill-holland-park","name":"Notting Hill & Holland Park"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Hermanos Colombian Coffee Roasters","s":"hermanos-portobello-road","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":78},{"n":"Opera Holland Park sings in Notting Hill","s":"opera-holland-park-sings-in-notting-hill","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":85},{"n":"Kossuth's house, Chepstow Villas","s":"lajos-kossuth","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":185}],"near_same":[{"s":"science-museum","m":2572},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":2656},{"s":"hyde-park","m":2812},{"s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","m":2819},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":4382},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":4405}]},{"slug":"tate-britain","name":"Tate Britain","area":"Millbank","address":"Millbank, SW1P 4RG","station":"Pimlico","walk":7,"lat":51.491142,"lng":-0.127585,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"Until 2027 the Millbank steps are closed for building work; the way in is the Manton entrance on Atterbury Street.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain","instagram":"tate","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/24553580","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Five hundred years of British art, and everything Turner left the nation. Free, with only the exhibitions ticketed.","note":"Tate Britain is the national collection of British art from the Tudors to now, and it stands on Millbank on the site of the old Millbank prison, built by the sugar merchant Henry Tate, who gave his pictures and the building and opened it on 21 July 1897. The Tate name was informal until 1932 and official until 2000, when the modern collection moved downriver to Bankside and this became the British half.\n\nThe displays are hung as a walk through time, so a visitor can go from Tudor portraits to Hockney and Bridget Riley in one line of rooms, and the Clore Gallery of 1987, James Stirling's postmodern wing, holds the Turner Bequest: everything J.M.W. Turner left the nation, the largest collection of his work anywhere. The building was renovated in 2013 by Caruso St John, who reopened the balcony of the rotunda, shut since the 1920s, and put a spiral staircase beneath the dome. Entry is free, and the Turner Prize exhibition comes here every other year.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/tate-britain.jpg?v=8554b6e9","thumb":"/img/tate-britain-480.jpg?v=420f8b87","width":1024,"height":575,"alt":"Tate Britain, Millbank","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Carlos Cunha, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tate_Britain,_Millbank_-_panoramio_(1).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"art/tate-britain","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":28,"whats_on":[{"slug":"tate-britains-permanent-galleries","name":"Tate Britain's permanent galleries","href":"/art/tate-britain/tate-britains-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Five hundred years of British art in one free run, and all the Turner there is.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"james-mcneill-whistler","name":"James McNeill Whistler","href":"/museums/tate-britain/james-mcneill-whistler/","verdict":"The first big European Whistler show in thirty years, with the Old Battersea Bridge Nocturne.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-21","to":"2026-09-27"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"the-90s-art-and-fashion","name":"The 90s: Art and Fashion","href":"/museums/tate-britain/the-90s-art-and-fashion/","verdict":"Edward Enninful's 1990s: McQueen, Westwood, Corinne Day, Hirst and Steve McQueen in one show.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-08","to":"2027-02-14"},"types":["art","exhibition","fashion","music"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"vanessa-bell-duncan-grant-inside-bloomsbury","name":"Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury","href":"/museums/tate-britain/vanessa-bell-duncan-grant-inside-bloomsbury/","verdict":"Three hundred works and a Charleston studio moved into the gallery.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-12","to":"2027-04-11"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tate-britain/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/tate-britain/"},{"name":"Literary London","href":"/literary/tate-britain/"}],"maps_q":"Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Locking Piece","s":"locking-piece","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":196},{"n":"MI5, Thames House","s":"mi5-thames-house","c":"secrets","cn":"Secrets & Espionage","m":337},{"n":"Regency Cafe","s":"regency-cafe","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":445}],"near_same":[{"s":"westminster-abbey","m":918},{"s":"houses-of-parliament","m":940},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":1235},{"s":"london-eye","m":1463},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":1500},{"s":"changing-the-guard","m":1516}]},{"slug":"leadenhall-market","name":"Leadenhall Market","area":"Leadenhall Market","address":"Gracechurch Street, EC3V 1LT","station":"Monument","walk":5,"lat":51.512729,"lng":-0.083569,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://leadenhallmarket.co.uk/","instagram":"leadenhallmarket","attrs":[],"osm":"way/143113935","types":[],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A Victorian covered arcade in cream and maroon ironwork, hidden in the middle of the banking district. Free to walk through, alive on a weekday and shut at the weekend.","note":"Leadenhall Market is a covered Victorian arcade in the middle of the City of London, the financial district, standing on the ground where the forum of Roman London was. A market has traded here since the fourteenth century, first in poultry and cheese, and the building over it is Horace Jones's of 1881: iron and glass painted cream, maroon and dark green, with cobbles underfoot and shopfronts that have kept their Victorian glass.\n\nWhat trades here now is lunch and drink for the offices around it, so it is full from midday on a weekday and the pubs spill out into the arcade in the early evening. At the weekend the shutters are down and it is empty, which is good for photographs and no use for anything else. Free, with nothing to book.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/leadenhall-market.jpg?v=33e7e4ca","thumb":"/img/leadenhall-market-480.jpg?v=fe33070c","width":1024,"height":693,"alt":"This is a panorama of 3 segments taken with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Diliff, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leadenhall_Market_In_London_-_Feb_2006_rotated.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"food-markets/leadenhall-market","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":29,"whats_on":[{"slug":"tour-for-muggles","name":"Tour for Muggles","href":"/food-markets/leadenhall-market/tour-for-muggles/","verdict":"An actor-led walk through the City and Bankside filming locations, Leadenhall Market to Borough Market, in groups of twenty.","runs":null,"types":["family","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Food Markets","href":"/food-markets/leadenhall-market/"},{"name":"Harry Potter","href":"/harry-potter/leadenhall-market/"}],"maps_q":"Leadenhall Market, Gracechurch Street, EC3V 1LT, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Aux Merveilleux de Fred Leadenhall","s":"aux-merveilleux-de-fred-leadenhall","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":6},{"n":"Tour for Muggles","s":"tour-for-muggles","c":"harry-potter","cn":"Harry Potter","m":8},{"n":"Rosslyn Coffee","s":"rosslyn-leadenhall-market","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":61}],"near_same":[{"s":"sky-garden","m":162},{"s":"hms-belfast","m":703},{"s":"tower-of-london","m":717},{"s":"borough-market","m":922},{"s":"tower-bridge","m":982},{"s":"st-pauls-cathedral","m":1035}]},{"slug":"piccadilly-circus","name":"Piccadilly Circus","area":"St James's","address":"Piccadilly Circus, W1J","station":"Piccadilly Circus","walk":1,"lat":51.509898,"lng":-0.134382,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/8250949","types":["free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Five streets meeting under a curved wall of advertising screens, with a winged archer on a fountain in the middle. Free, and at its best after dark.","note":"Piccadilly Circus is the junction where Regent Street, Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street and the Haymarket meet. It was cut in 1819 when Regent Street was driven north through the city and given its curve, and it has been lit by advertising since 1908, first in light bulbs, then neon, and since 2017 as a single curved screen. Only the buildings on the north-west corner are allowed to carry any, which is why all the light comes from one side.\n\nIn the middle stands a winged archer in aluminium on a bronze fountain, put up in 1893 in memory of Lord Shaftesbury, the reformer who spent his life on factory laws and the schooling of poor children. The sculptor meant it for Anteros, the god of love returned; everybody has called it Eros ever since. Free, open, with traffic running through it, and it only looks like the photographs after dark.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/piccadilly-circus.jpg?v=fa61ae31","thumb":"/img/piccadilly-circus-480.jpg?v=69fea33d","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"An unidentified New Routemaster , one of the route 38 trial buses based on the livery, passes through Picadilly Circus","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Lily.Smith, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Picadilly_Circus,_London_(9308789313).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"harry-potter/piccadilly-circus","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":30,"also_in":[{"name":"Harry Potter","href":"/harry-potter/piccadilly-circus/"}],"maps_q":"Piccadilly Circus, W1J, London","in_area":{"slug":"st-jamess","name":"St James's"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain","s":"shaftesbury-memorial-fountain","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":7},{"n":"Hidden London: Piccadilly Circus \u2014 the heart of London","s":"hidden-london-piccadilly-circus-the-heart-of-london","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":14},{"n":"A Village in Piccadilly","s":"a-village-in-piccadilly","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":14}],"near_same":[{"s":"national-gallery","m":405},{"s":"nelsons-column","m":505},{"s":"covent-garden-piazza","m":830},{"s":"churchill-war-rooms","m":925},{"s":"buckingham-palace","m":1159},{"s":"british-museum","m":1168}]}]}