Sights in London
-
A
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey is such an important commemoration site for both the British royalty and the nation’s political and artistic idols, it’s difficult to overstress its symbolic value or imagine its equivalent anywhere else in the world. With the exception of Edward V and Edward VIII, every English sovereign has been crowned here since William the Conqueror in 1066, and most of the monarchs from Henry III (died 1272) to George II (died 1760) were also buried here.
There is an extraordinary amount to see here but, unless you enjoy feeling like part of a herd, come very early or very late.
The abbey is a magnificent sight. Though a mixture of architectural styles, it is c…
reviewed
-
B
Natural History Museum
This mammoth institution is dedicated to the Victorian pursuit of collecting and cataloguing. Walking into the Life galleries (Blue Zone) in the 1880 Gothic Revival building off Cromwell Rd evokes the musty moth-eaten era of the Victorian gentleman scientist. The main museum building, with its blue and sand-coloured brick and terracotta, was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and is as impressive as the towering diplodocus dinosaur skeleton in the Central Hall just ahead of the main entrance. It’s hard to match any of the exhibits with this initial sight, except perhaps the huge blue whale just beyond it. Children, who are the main fans of this museum, are primed for more pr…
reviewed
-
C
Tower Bridge
Perhaps second only to Big Ben as London’s most recognisable symbol, Tower Bridge doesn’t disappoint up close. There’s something about its neo-Gothic towers and blue suspension struts that that make it quite enthralling to look at. Built in 1894 as a much-needed crossing point in the east, it was equipped with a then revolutionary bascule (seesaw) mechanism that could clear the way for oncoming ships in three minutes. Although London’s days as a thriving port are long over, the bridge still does its stuff, lifting around 1000 times per year and as many as 10 times per day in summer. (For information on the next lifting ring 7940 3984 or check the bridge’s website.) The …
reviewed
-
D
St Paul’s Cathedral
Even the bombs of the Blitz couldn't erase the distinctive dome of London's most famous church. St Paul's was built by Sir Christopher Wren to replace the medieval cathedral destroyed in the Great Fire, but he had to sneak his plans for a dramatic dome past the City planners. Head to the crypt for memorials to famous Londoners and the Golden Gallery atop the dome for awesome City views.
reviewed
-
E
National Gallery
With more than 2000 Western European paintings on display, this is one of the largest galleries in the world. But it’s the quality of the works, and not the quantity, that impresses most. Almost five million people visit each year, keen to see seminal paintings from every important epoch in the history of art, including works by Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Velázquez, Van Gogh and Renoir, just to name a few. Although it can get ridiculously busy in here, the galleries are spacious, sometimes even sedate, and it’s never so bad that you can’t appreciate the works. That said, weekday mornings and Wednesday evenings (after 6pm) are the best times to visit,…
reviewed
-
F
Tate Modern
The public’s love affair with this phenomenally successful modern art gallery shows no sign of waning a decade after it opened. Serious art critics have occasionally swiped at its populism, particularly the ‘participatory art’ exhibited in the Turbine Hall (Carl Höller’s funfair-like slides called Test Site; Olafur Eliasson’s arm-flapping The Weather Project; Doris Salcedo’s enormous crack in the floor called Shibboleth and Bodyspacemotionthing; and Robert Morris’ climbable geometric sculpture first exhibited in London in 1971 and recreated here in 2009). But an average five million visitors a year appear to disagree, making it the world’s most popular contem…
reviewed
-
G
Trafalgar Square
In many ways this is the centre of London, where rallies and marches take place, tens of thousands of revellers usher in the New Year and locals congregate for anything from communal open-air cinema to various political protests. The great square was neglected over many years, ringed with gnarling traffic and given over to flocks of pigeons that would dive-bomb anyone with a morsel of food on their person. But things changed in 2000 when Ken Livingstone became London Mayor and embarked on a bold and imaginative scheme to transform it into the kind of space John Nash had intended when he designed it in the early 19th century. Traffic was banished from the northern flank in…
reviewed
-
H
London Eye
It’s difficult to remember what London looked like before the landmark London Eye began twirling at the southwestern end of Jubilee Gardens in 2000. Not only has it fundamentally altered the skyline of the South Bank but, standing 135m tall in a fairly flat city, it is visible from many surprising parts of the city (eg Kennington and Mayfair). A ride – or ‘flight’, as it is called here – in one of the wheel’s 32 glass-enclosed gondolas holding up to 28 people is something you really can’t miss if you want to say you’ve ‘done’ London; 3.5 million people a year give it a go. It takes a gracefully slow 30 minutes and, weather permitting, you can see 25 miles in every directi…
reviewed
-
I
British Museum
One of London’s most visited attractions, this museum draws an average of five million punters each year through its marvellous porticoed main gate on Great Russell St (a few go through the quieter Montague Pl entrance). One of the world’s oldest and finest museums, the British Museum started in 1749 in the form of royal physician Hans Sloane’s ‘cabinet of curiosities’ – which he later bequeathed to the country – and carried on expanding its collection (which now numbers some seven million items) through judicious acquisition and the controversial plundering of empire. It’s an exhaustive and exhilarating stampede through world cultures, with galleries devoted to Egypt, We…
reviewed
-
J
Science Museum
With seven floors of interactive and educational exhibits, the Science Museum is informative, entertaining and comprehensive. Be advised that it is slated to undergo a massive modernisation costing £150 million. Parts or all of the museum may be closed when you visit so call or check the website beforehand. The Energy Hall, on the ground floor as you enter, concentrates on full-sized machines of the Industrial Revolution, showing how the first steam engines such as Puffing Billy, a steam locomotive dating from 1813, helped Britain become ‘the workshop of the world’ in the early 19th century. Animations show how the machines worked and are accompanied by detailed overall …
reviewed
Advertisement
-
K
Buckingham Palace
Built in 1705 as Buckingham House for the duke of the same name, this palace has been the royal family’s London lodgings since 1837, when St James’s Palace was judged too old-fashioned and insufficiently impressive. It is dominated by the 25m-high Queen Victoria Memorial at the end of The Mall. Tickets for the palace are on sale from the Ticket Office at the Visitor Entrance, Buckingham Palace Rd. After a series of crises and embarrassing revelations in the early 1990s, the royal spin doctors cranked things up a gear to try to revive popular support, and it was decided to swing open the doors of Buck House to the public for the first time. Well, to 19 of the 661 rooms…
reviewed
-
L
Sir John Soane’s Museum
This little museum is one of the most atmospheric and fascinating sights in London. The building is the beautiful, bewitching home of architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837), which he left brimming with surprising personal effects and curiosities, and the museum represents his exquisite and eccentric taste. Soane was a country bricklayer’s son, most famous for designing the Bank of England. In his work and life, he drew on ideas picked up while on an 18th-century grand tour of Italy. He married a rich woman and used the wealth to build this house and the one next door, which was opened as an exhibition and education space in late 2007. The heritage-listed house is largely as…
reviewed
-
M
Shakespeare's Globe
If you love Shakespeare and the theatre, the Globe will knock you off your feet. This is authentic Shakespearean theatre, and a near-perfect replica of the building the Bard worked in from 1598 to 1611, that follows Elizabethan staging practices. The building is a wooden O without a roof over the central stage area, and although there are covered wooden bench seats in tiers around the stage, many people (there’s room for 700) like to do as the 17th-century ‘groundlings’ did, and stand in front of the stage, shouting and heckling. Because the building is quite open to the elements, you may have to wrap up. No umbrellas are allowed, but cheap rain coats are on sale. The the…
reviewed
-
N
Borough Market
On this spot in some form or another since the 13th century, ‘London’s Larder’ has enjoyed an enormous renaissance in recent years, overflowing with food-lovers, both experienced and wannabes, and has become quite a tourist destination.
reviewed
-
O
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace, the former palace of Henry VIII, is said to be stalked by the ghost of one of his six wives. Perhaps you’ll see her stalking through the regal state apartments or searching for her missing head in the famous palace maze.
reviewed
-
P
British Library
In 1998 the British Library moved to these spanking-new premises between King’s Cross and Euston stations. At a cost of £500 million, it was Britain’s most expensive building, and not one that is universally loved; Colin St John Wilson’s exterior of straight lines of red brick, which Prince Charles reckoned was akin to a ‘secret-police building’, is certainly not to all tastes. But even people who don’t like the building from the outside can’t fault the spectacularly cool and spacious interior. It is the nation’s principal copyright library and stocks one copy of every British publication as well as historic manuscripts, books and maps from the British Museum. The library…
reviewed
-
Q
Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Rooms
Down in the bunker where Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his cabinet and generals met during WWII, £6 million has been spent on a huge exhibition devoted to ‘the greatest Briton’. This whizz-bang multimedia Churchill Museum joins the highly evocative Cabinet War Rooms, where chiefs of staff slept, ate and plotted Hitler’s downfall, blissfully believing they were protected from Luftwaffe bombs by the 3m slab of concrete overhead. (Turns out it would have crumpled like paper had the area taken a hit.) Together, these two sections make you forget the Churchill who was a maverick and lousy peacetime politician, and drive home how much the cigar-chewing, wartime PM was a cas…
reviewed
-
R
Old Royal Naval College
When Christopher Wren was commissioned by William and Mary to build a naval hospital here in 1692, he designed it in two separate halves so as not to spoil the view of the river from the Queen’s House, Inigo Jones’ miniature masterpiece to the south. Today it also frames Canary Wharf and the skyscrapers of Docklands to the north. Built on the site of the Old Palace of Placentia, where Henry VIII was born in 1491, the hospital was initially intended for those wounded in the victory over the French at La Hogue. In 1869 the building was converted to a Naval College. Now even the navy has left and the premises are home to the University of Greenwich and Trinity College of M…
reviewed
-
S
Wallace Collection
Arguably London’s finest small gallery (relatively unknown even to Londoners), the Wallace Collection is an enthralling glimpse into 18th-century aristocratic life. The sumptuously restored Italianate mansion houses a treasure-trove of 17th- and 18th-century paintings, porcelain, artefacts and furniture collected by generations of the same family and bequeathed to the nation by the widow of Sir Richard Wallace (1818–90) on condition it should always be on display in the centre of London. Among the many highlights here – besides the warm and friendly staff – are paintings by Rembrandt, Hals, Delacroix, Titian, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velàzquez, Reynolds and Gainsborough…
reviewed
-
T
Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret
This unique museum, at the top of the narrow and rickety 32-step tower of St Thomas Church (1703), focuses on the nastiness of 19th-century hospital treatment. The garret was used by the apothecary of St Thomas’s Hospital to store medicinal herbs and now houses an atmospheric medical museum delightfully hung with bunches of herbs that soften the impact of the horrible devices on display. Even more interesting is the 19th-century operating theatre attached to the garret. Here you’ll see the sharp, vicious-looking instruments 19th-century doctors used, and you’ll view the rough-and-ready conditions under which they operated – without antiseptic or anaesthetic on a wooden ta…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
U
Geffrye Museum
Definitely Shoreditch’s most accessible sight, this 18th-century ivy-clad series of almshouses with a herb garden draws you in immediately. The museum inside is devoted to domestic interiors, with each room of the main building furnished to show how the homes of the relatively affluent middle class would have looked from Elizabethan times right through to the end of the 19th century. A postmodernist extension completed in 1998 contains several 20th-century rooms (a flat from the 1930s, a room in the contemporary style of the 1950s and a 1990s converted warehouse complete with Ikea furniture) as well as a lovely herb garden, gallery for temporary exhibits, a design centre …
reviewed
-
V
Abney Park Cemetery
Unfairly dubbed ‘the poor man’s Highgate’ by some, this magical place was bought and developed by a private firm from 1840 to provide burial grounds for central London’s overflow. It was a dissenters (ie non–Church of England) cemetery and many of the most influential London Presbyterians, Quakers and Baptists are buried here, including the Salvation Army founder, William Booth, whose grand tombstone greets you as you enter from Church St. Since the 1950s the cemetery has been left to fend for itself and, these days, is as much a bird and plant sanctuary, a gay cruising ground and a hang-out for some of Hackney’s least salubrious drug users, as a delightfully overgrown ru…
reviewed
-
W
Covent Garden Market
London’s first planned square is now the exclusive reserve of tourists who flock here to shop in the quaint old arcades, be entertained by buskers, pay through the nose for refreshments at outdoor cafes and bars, and watch men and women pretend to be statues.
On its western flank is St Paul’s Church. The Earl of Bedford, the man who had commissioned Inigo Jones to design the piazza, asked for the simplest possible church, basically no more than a barn. The architect responded by producing ‘the handsomest barn in England’. It has long been regarded as the actors’ church for its associations with the theatre, and contains memorials to the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Vi…
reviewed
-
X
Battersea Park
These 50 hectares of greenery stretch between Albert and Chelsea Bridges. With its Henry Moore sculptures and Peace Pagoda, erected in 1985 by a group of Japanese Buddhists to commemorate Hiroshima Day, the park’s tranquil appearance belies a bloody past. It was the site of an assassination attempt on King Charles II in 1671 and of a duel in 1829 between the Duke of Wellington and an opponent who accused him of treason.
A recent refurbishment has seen the 19th-century landscaping reinstated and the grand riverside terraces spruced up. At the same time, the Festival of Britain pleasure gardens, including the spectacular Vista Fountains, have been restored. There are lake…
reviewed
-
Y
Greenwich Park
This is one of London’s largest and loveliest parks, with a grand avenue, wide-open spaces, a rose garden, picturesque walks and impressive views across the River Thames to Docklands from the top of the hill near the statue of General Wolfe opposite the Royal Observatory. Covering a full 73 hectares, it is the oldest enclosed royal park and is partly the work of Le Nôtre, who landscaped the palace gardens of Versailles for Louis XIV. It contains several historic sights, a teahouse near the Royal Observatory, a cafe behind the National Maritime Museum and a deer park in the southeast corner.
reviewed
