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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.
A mile of riverside path with a concert hall, a theatre, a gallery and a skate park strung along it. Free from end to end.
The South Bank is the stretch of walkway between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars, and walking it is one of the things London does best: the river on one side, Parliament and St Paul's in view along it, and a run of public buildings on the other.
It exists because of one summer. The Festival of Britain was staged on this ground in 1951 to cheer the country up after the war, and it left behind the Royal Festival Hall, the walk itself, and the idea that the south bank was somewhere to go at all - before that it was wharves and factories, and before that a marsh. The rest arrived over the next thirty years in unapologetic concrete: the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery, and Denys Lasdun's National Theatre, which a future king compared to a nuclear power station and which is now protected as one of the best buildings of its decade.
Under the Queen Elizabeth Hall is the undercroft, skated since the 1970s and kept when the centre tried to move it. Second-hand books are sold under Waterloo Bridge most days. All of it is free; it is busiest on a Saturday afternoon and best at dusk.
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Photo by Clem Onojeghuo clemono2, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons · Photo by Clem Onojeghuo clemono2, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.