Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens

Six hundred acres of royal park across the middle of London, with a lake, a memorial and a corner for arguing.

Two parks that read as one. Together they cover 253 hectares, about 625 acres, and you can walk from Marble Arch to Kensington Palace without leaving grass. Henry VIII took the land from Westminster Abbey in 1536 and kept deer on it. Charles I opened it to the public in 1637, which makes it one of the first pieces of royal property anybody could simply walk into. Queen Caroline had the Westbourne dammed in the 1730s to make the Serpentine, the long lake that divides the two halves; the bridge across it, of 1826, is the boundary, with Hyde Park to the east and Kensington Gardens to the west. The park has taken most of the country's big public moments. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was held here inside Paxton's Crystal Palace, a building of iron and glass the length of three football pitches, which was taken down afterwards and moved to Sydenham. Speakers' Corner has been a place to stand up and say anything since 1872. Rock has been played here since 1968, and Queen drew perhaps 150,000 people in 1976. The rest is for ordinary use: the Albert Memorial, gilded and enormous, on the Kensington side; the Diana Memorial Fountain, which children paddle in; the Round Pond, the Serpentine galleries, deckchairs, and the Serpentine Swimming Club, who have swum here on Christmas morning since 1864.