Sacred London

Places of religious significance. Worth a visit for the architecture, the art or the history.

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St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral

The Greek merchants of Victorian London built themselves a Byzantine cathedral off Queensway, and it is the one Orthodox interior in the city everybody should see.

ChristianityMusic & choirs

Twenty-seven of the places on this list are Christian and almost all of them are Anglican or Roman Catholic, which is a poor description of Christian London. This is the other half: a domed Byzantine building of 1877, put up by the Greek shipping and trading families who had settled in Bayswater, and protected at the highest grade for its interior.

What that interior does is the opposite of what an English church does with the same problem. There are no seats to speak of and nothing to draw the eye forward; instead gold, marble, and mosaic over every surface and up into the dome, with the screen of icons between you and the altar. The Sunday liturgy is sung unaccompanied and runs for three hours, and people arrive and leave through it rather than sitting from beginning to end.

It opens on weekday mornings, when it is quiet and you can look properly.

Where
Moscow Road, Bayswater, W2 4LQ
Nearest station
Bayswater · 3 min walk

Hours

Monday10:00 – 14:00
Tuesday10:00 – 14:00
Wednesday18:00 – 19:00
Thursday10:00 – 14:00
Friday10:00 – 14:00
SaturdayClosed
SundayClosed

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 18 September 2026.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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