The West End
At 19 hectares, Green Park is the smallest of the eight royal parks. It has huge plane and oak trees and undulating meadows, and it’s never as crowded as its neighbour, the more manicured St James’s Park. It was once a duelling ground and, like Hyde Park, served as a vegetable garden during WWII.
It famously has no flower beds as they were banned by Queen Catherine of Braganza after she learned her philandering husband Charles II had been picking posies for his mistresses. Or so the story goes…
20 MILES
The world’s largest and oldest continuously occupied fortress, Windsor Castle is a majestic vision of battlements and towers. Used for state occasions, it…
0.77 MILES
A splendid mixture of architectural styles, Westminster Abbey is considered the finest example of Early English Gothic. It's not merely a beautiful place…
1.87 MILES
One of London's most amazing attractions, Tate Modern is an outstanding modern- and contemporary-art gallery housed in the creatively revamped Bankside…
1.59 MILES
With its thunderous, animatronic dinosaur, riveting displays about planet earth, outstanding Darwin Centre and architecture straight from a Gothic fairy…
2 MILES
Sir Christopher Wren’s 300-year-old architectural masterpiece is a London icon. Towering over diminutive Ludgate Hill in a superb position that's been a…
2.88 MILES
Few parts of the UK are as steeped in history or as impregnated with legend and superstition as the titanic stonework of the Tower of London. Not only is…
1.97 MILES
Seeing a play at Shakespeare's Globe – ideally standing under the open-air "wooden O" – is experiencing the playwright's work at its best and most…
1.16 MILES
With almost six million visitors trooping through its doors annually, the British Museum in Bloomsbury, one of the oldest and finest museums in the world,…
0.11 MILES
Just outside the borders of Green Park is Spencer House, completed in the Palladian style in 1766 for the first Earl Spencer, an ancestor of the late…
0.2 MILES
Five ground-floor rooms of Clarence House, the official residence of Charles, the Prince of Wales and his consort, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are…
0.22 MILES
The striking Tudor gatehouse of St James’s Palace is the only surviving part of a building initiated by the palace-mad Henry VIII in 1531 on the grounds…
0.25 MILES
Running perpendicular to Burlington Arcade between Old Bond and Albermarle Sts is this more recent arcade dating from 1880.
0.25 MILES
This small chapel (1625) is where royals such as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother have lain in their coffins in the days before their funerals. The…
0.25 MILES
Flanking Burlington House, which is home to the Royal Academy of Arts, is this delightful arcade, built in 1819. Today it is a shopping precinct for the…
0.26 MILES
Britain’s oldest society devoted to fine arts was founded in 1768 and moved here to Burlington House a century later. For its 250th birthday in 2018, the…
0.27 MILES
Not many public buildings of note were built during the first 15 years of the 20th century, apart from the Admiralty Arch (1910) in the Edwardian baroque…