Things to do in London
-
A
Lloyd’s of London
While the world’s leading insurance brokers are inside underwriting everything from cosmonauts’ lives to film stars’ legs, people outside still stop to gawp at the stainless-steel external ducting and staircases of the Lloyd’s of London building. The work of Richard Rogers, one of the architects of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, its brave-new-world postmodernism strikes a particular contrast with the olde-worlde Leadenhall Market next door. While you can watch people whizzing up and down the outside of the building in its all-glass lifts, sadly you can’t experience it yourself.
reviewed
-
The Original London Sightseeing Tour: Hop-on Hop-off
24 hour pass (Departs London, United Kingdom)
by Viator
Experience the essential introduction to London aboard the original hop-on hop-off sightseeing tour. You'll see all the magical sights of London in a…Not LP reviewed
-
B
Dennis Severs' House
This extraordinary Georgian House is set up as if its occupants had just walked out the door. There are half-drunk cups of tea, lit candles and, in a perhaps unnecessary attention to detail, a full chamber pot by the bed. More than a museum, it's an opportunity to meditate on the minutiae of everyday Georgian life through silent exploration.
Bookings are required for the Monday evening candlelit sessions (£12; 6pm to 9pm), but you can just show up on the first and third Sundays of the month (£8; noon to 4pm) or the following Mondays (£5; noon to 2pm).
reviewed
-
C
Fulham Palace
Summer home of the bishops of London from 704 to 1973, Fulham Palace is an interesting mix of architectural styles set in beautiful gardens and, until 1924, when filled with rubble, enclosed by the longest moat in England. The oldest part to survive is the little red-brick Tudor gateway, but the main building you see today is from the mid-17th century and was remodelled in the 19th century. There’s a pretty walled garden and, detached from the main house, a Tudor Revival chapel designed by Butterfield in 1866. You can learn about the history of the palace and its inhabitants in the museum. Guided tours, which depart a couple of times a month on Sunday, usually take in…
reviewed
-
D
Britain at War Experience
You can pop down to the London Underground air-raid shelter, look at gas masks and ration books, stroll around Southwark during the Blitz and learn about the battle on the home front. It's crammed with fascinating WWII memorabilia.
reviewed
-
E
St Clement Danes
An 18th-century English nursery rhyme that incorporates the names of London churches goes: ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements’, with the soothing final lines: ‘Here comes a chopper to chop off your head/Chop, chop, chop, chop, the last man’s dead!’ Isn’t that nice? Well, even though the bells of this church chime that nursery tune every day at 9am, noon and 3pm, this isn’t the St Clements referred to in the first line of the verse – that’s St Clements Eastcheap, in the City. But we all know that historical fact needn’t get in the way of a good story.
Sir Christopher Wren designed the original building in 1682 but only the walls and a…
reviewed
-
F
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Housed in a traditional building along the Mall, the ICA is as untraditional as you can possibly get. This was where Picasso and Henry Moore had their first UK shows, and ever since then the institute has sat comfortably on the cutting and controversial edge of the British arts world, with an excellent range of experimental/progressive/radical/obscure films, music and club nights, photography, art, theatre, lectures, multimedia works and book readings. There’s also the licensed ICA Bar & Restaurant. The complex includes an excellent bookshop.
reviewed
-
G
Kenwood House
This magnificent neoclassical mansion stands at the northern end of the heath in a glorious sweep of landscaped gardens leading down to a picturesque lake, around which concerts take place during the summer months. The house was remodelled by Robert Adam in the 18th century, and rescued from developers by Lord Iveagh Guinness, who donated it to the nation in 1927, including the wonderful collection of art it contains. The Iveagh Bequest, as it is known, contains paintings by such greats as Rembrandt (one of his many self- portraits), Consta-ble, Turner, Hals, Vermeer and Van Dyck and is one of the finest small collections in Britain. Robert Adam's Great Stairs and the…
reviewed
-
H
St John’s, Smith Square
In the heart of Westminster, this eye-catching church was built by Thomas Archer in 1728 under the Fifty New Churches Act (1711), which aimed to build 50 new churches for London’s rapidly growing metropolitan area. Though they never did build all 50 churches, St John’s, along with a dozen others, saw the light of day. Unfortunately, with its four corner towers and monumental facades, the structure was much maligned for the first century of its existence thanks to rumours that Queen Anne likened it to a footstool, though it’s also said that she actually requested a church built in the shape of a footstool. Whatever the case, it’s generally agreed now that the church is a…
reviewed
-
I
Dulwich Picture Gallery
The UK’s oldest public art gallery, the small Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by the idiosyncratic architect Sir John Soane between 1811 and 1814 to house nearby Dulwich College’s collection of paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Poussin, Lely, Van Dyck and others. Unusually, the collectors Noel Desenfans and painter Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois chose to have their mausoleums, lit by a moody lumière mystérieuse (mysterious light) created with tinted glass, placed among the pictures. In the Wolfson Room, seek out ‘Bridge in an Italian Landscape’ by Adam Pynacker, with its masterful use of light. Celebrating its bicentenary in 2011,…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
J
Banqueting House
This is the only surviving part of the Tudor Whitehall Palace, which once stretched most of the way down Whitehall and burned down in 1698. It was designed as England’s first purely Renaissance building by Inigo Jones after he returned from Italy, and it looked like no other structure in the country at the time. Apparently, the English hated it for more than a century.
A bust outside commemorates 30 January 1649 when Charles I, accused of treason by Cromwell after the Civil War, was executed on a scaffold built against a 1st-floor window here. When the monarchy was reinstated with Charles II, it inevitably became something of a royalist shrine. In a huge, virtually…
reviewed
-
London in One Day Sightseeing Tour
8.5 - 9 hours (Departs London, United Kingdom)
by Viator
On the London in One Day Sightseeing Tour, you will explore the very best of London on a fully-guided tour. You'll take a scenic drive through the West End and…Not LP reviewed
from USD$124.32 -
K
All Hallows-by-the-Tower
A church by the name All Hallows (meaning ‘All Saints’) has stood on this site since AD 675, and the best bit of the building today is undoubtedly its atmospheric Saxon undercroft (crypt). There you’ll find a pavement of reused Roman tiles and walls of the 7th-century Saxon church, as well as coins and bits of local history. Above ground it’s a pleasant enough church, rebuilt after WWII. There’s a copper spire (added in 1957 to make the church stand out more), a pulpit from a Wren church in Cannon St that was destroyed in WWII and a beautiful 17th-century font cover by the master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons. From April to September, free 20-minute church tours leave at…
reviewed
-
L
Clapham Common
A magnificent expanse of green at the heart of the Clapham neighbourhood, huge Clapham Common is a verdant venue for many outdoor summer events (see http://claphamhighstreet.co.uk) and sports. The main thoroughfare, Clapham High St, starts at the common’s northeastern edge, lined with many of the bars, restaurants and shops that draw people to Clapham. It’s much more pleasant to explore the more upmarket streets of Clapham Old Town, a short distance northwest of the tube station, and Clapham Common North Side at the common’s northwesternmost edge.
Just west of the Pavement, the brick and stone Holy Trinity Church (1776) was home to the Clapham Sect, a group of…
reviewed
-
M
Wellington Arch
This magnificent neoclassical 1826 arch, facing Apsley House in the green space strangled by the Hyde Park Corner roundabout, originally faced the Hyde Park Screen, but was shunted here in 1882 for road widening. The same year saw the removal of the disproportionately large equestrian statue of the duke crowning it, making way some years later for Europe’s largest bronze sculpture: Peace Descending on the Quadriga of War (1912), three years in the casting.
Until the 1960s part of the monument served as a tiny police station (complete with pet moggy), but was restored and opened up to the public as a three-floor exhibition space, with exhibits on the blue plaque scheme …
reviewed
-
N
Chiswick House
This stunner of a neo-Palladian pavilion with an octagonal dome and colonnaded portico is a delight. The confection was designed by the third Earl of Burlington (1694–1753) fired up with passion for all things Roman after his grand tour of Italy.
Inside, some of the rooms are almost overpoweringly grand. The coffered dome of the main salon has been left ungilded and the walls are decorated with eight enormous paintings. With its stunningly painted ceiling (by William Kent), the Blue Velvet Room also has a portrait of architect Inigo Jones, much admired by Lord Burlington, over one of the doors. Look out for carvings of the pagan vegetative deity, the Green Man, in the…
reviewed
-
O
Syon House
Just across the Thames from Kew Gardens, Syon House was once a medieval abbey named after Mt Zion. In 1542 Henry VIII dissolved the order of Bridgettine nuns who were peacefully living here and had it rebuilt into a residence. (In 1547, they say, God got his revenge when Henry’s coffin was brought to Syon en route to Windsor for burial and burst open during the night, leaving his body to be set upon by the estate’s dogs.) The house from where Lady Jane Grey ascended the throne for her nine-day reign in 1553 was remodelled in the neoclassical style by Robert Adam in the 18th century and has plenty of Adam furniture and oak panelling. The interior was designed on…
reviewed
-
P
Eltham Palace
The art deco house here was built between 1933 and 1937 by the well-to-do textile merchant Stephen Courtauld (of Courtauld Institute fame) and his wife Virginia; from the impressive entrance hall with its dome and huge circular carpet with geometric shapes, to the black-marble dining room with silver-foil ceiling and burlwood-veneer fireplace, it appears the couple had taste as well as money. They also, rather fashionably for the times, had a pet lemur, and the heated cage, complete with tropical murals and a bamboo ladder leading to the ground floor, for the spoiled (and vicious) ‘Mah-jongg’ is also on view. A royal palace was built on this site in 1305 and was for a…
reviewed
-
Q
Battersea Power Station
Its four smokestacks famously celebrated on Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover, Battersea Power Station is one of south London’s best known monuments. Built by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1933 with two chimneys (the other two were added in 1955), the power station was snuffed out in 1983 only to enter an existential limbo, slowly deteriorating as it passed from one optimistic developer to the next. The power station’s future seems as uncertain as ever, with another ‘master plan’ in the pipeline.
reviewed
-
2-Day Cotswolds, Bath and Oxford Small-Group Tour from London
2 days (Departs London, United Kingdom)
by Viator
Escape London for two days on a small-group overnight tour to the Cotswolds, Bath and Oxford. Visit small, beautiful towns where it seems as if time has stood…Not LP reviewed
from USD$243.92 Advertisement
-
R
London Wetland Centre
One of Europe’s largest inland wetland projects, this 43-hectare centre run by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust was transformed from four Victorian reservoirs in 2000 and attracts some 140 species of bird as well as 300 types of moth and butterfly. From the Visitor Centre and glassed-in Observatory overlooking the ponds, meandering paths and boardwalks lead visitors around the grounds, taking in the habitats of its many residents, including ducks, swans, geese and coots and the rarer bitterns, herons and kingfishers. There’s even a large colony of parakeets, which may or may not be the descendants of caged pets. By no means miss the Peacock Tower, a three-storey hide on the…
reviewed
-
Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter
7 hours (Departs London, United Kingdom)
by Viator
Fans of Harry Potter will get a behind-the-scenes look at the magical world of Harry and his friends. Forget public transport and parking fees, this trip to…Not LP reviewed
from USD$89.70 -
S
St Bartholomew-the-Great
This spectacular Norman church dates from 1123. It was originally a part of the monastery of Augustinian Canons, but became the parish church of Smithfield in 1539 when King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. It sits on the corner of the grounds of St Bart’s Hospital, on the side closest to Smithfield Market. Its authentic Norman arches, the weathered and blackened stone, the dark wood carvings and the low lighting lend the space an ancient calm. There are historical associations with William Hogarth, who was baptised here, and with politician Benjamin Franklin, who worked on site as an apprentice printer. Another selling point for modern audiences is that scenes from…
reviewed
-
T
Dickens House Museum
Charles Dickens, the great Victorian novelist, lived a nomadic life in the big city, moving around London so often that he left behind an unrivalled trail of blue plaques. This handsome four-storey house is his sole surviving residence before he upped and moved to Kent. Not that he stayed here for very long – he lasted a mere 2½ years (1837–39) – but this is where his work really flourished: he dashed off The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist despite worry over debts, deaths and his ever-growing family. The house was saved from demolition and the museum opened in 1925, showcasing the family drawing room (restored to its original condition) and 10…
reviewed
-
Paris Rail Day Trip from London
13 hours (Departs London, United Kingdom)
by Viator
Staying in London but want to see Paris? Travel by Eurostar at a convenient time, to discover the "City of Lights" independently or with a guide. Whether it's…Not LP reviewed
from USD$275.40