London Attractions Guide: Things To Do in London, England

Spotlight

London

Attractions

No matter how long you intend to stay in London, it’s best to take an introductory hop on-and-off double-decker bus tour that runs the circuit of the major highlights, leaving every 20 minutes from several pick-up points in the city center; Original Tour is the agency that organizes these outings.

Note that if you plan on a lot of sightseeing, you’ll get the most for your money if you buy a London Pass that gets you free entry to over 50 attractions, plus perks like jumping the line at busy sights and receiving discounts at local restaurant (£29–£34 for one day, £42–£55 for two days, £52–£71 for three days; lower price doesn't include transit). While in London, we also recommend buying a copy of Time Out magazine for the most up-to-date theater, art, restaurant, and nightlife listings; you can also read them online in advance of your trip, at www.timeout.com.

Main Sights
Any visit to London should start with a tour of the city’s historical landmarks. After all, the nearly 2000-year-old city is the seat of the British monarchy, and packed with must-see ancient sights. Begin your wandering in the royal enclaves of Westminster and Whitehall, making the Houses of Parliament (Old Palace Yard) the first stop on your itinerary. This grand Gothic-Revival edifice sits on the Thames, with the iconic Big Ben and its 13-ton bell striking the hour from the tower at the building’s eastern end. You can admire this living bastion of Britain’s democracy from the outside, or catch a debate (on select days) in the public galleries of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords; if you want to visit both Houses, you can do so on a guided tour from August through September only (£7), but book well in advance.

Right across Abingdon Street you’ll find the next major highlight, Westminster Abbey (Parliament Sq.; opening hours vary; closed Sun; £8), a splendid Gothic abbey chock-full of plaques, statuary, and memorial reliefs honoring dozens of famous British luminaries, many of whom who are also buried here – look for Charles Dickens, Laurence Olivier, and Rudyard Kipling, among others, plus the plaque commemorating Thomas Parr, who lived to the ripe old age of 152 years and 9 months.

You mustn’t leave the area without paying due respect to the Queen – a short stroll to the west will bring you to the monarch’s official residence, Buckingham Palace (Buckingham Palace Rd.), a colossal 600-room residence where you can experience the pomp and fanfare that attenuates the Changing of the Guard ceremony (weather permitting daily at 11.30am from April through July, and on alternate days the rest of the year). If you want to check out the palace’s interiors, visit in summer, when the Queen is on holiday, and 19 palace rooms and the 39-acre royal garden are opened to the public (Aug–Sept daily 9.45am–6pm; £14).

For an essential slice of ancient London, you’ll have to venture to The City and visit our favorite local landmark: the 900-year old Tower of London (Tower Hill; Mar.–Oct.: Tues–Sat 9am–6pm, Sun & Mon 10am–6pm; Nov.–Feb.: Tues–Sat 9am–5pm, Sun & Mon 10am–5pm; £15), a haunted medieval fortress overlooking the Thames, with a long history of murders, tortures, executions (two of Henry VIII’s wives were executed here in the 16th century), and other macabre goings on. It’s best seen on a Beefeater guided tour (several times daily); you’ll learn about the tower’s various roles as armory, royal palace, fortress, prison, place of execution, mint, and, even, menagerie. And don’t miss the Tower’s pièce de resistance, the Crown Jewels, an extraordinary collection of precious stones with a 2868-diamond Imperial State Crown as the star exhibit.

Finally, don’t leave the area without seeing St. Paul’s Cathedral (St Paul’s Churchyard; Mon–Sat 8.30am–4pm; £9, £3 extra for guided tour), the magnificent opus of famed architect Sir Christopher Wren. The cathedral is especially noteworthy for its superb dome, which survived the bombings of World War II virtually unharmed.

Museums & Galleries
With over 200 museums and galleries, London is a delight for art and culture buffs. What’s more, many of the major institutions allow free entry to their permanent collections – a boon in a city that can otherwise be quite expensive – and some also allow free access to their temporary exhibits. While it could take a couple of weeks to visit all of the museums this city has to offer, you can get an excellent sampling by visiting our must-see list.

Start with the mammoth antiquities collection of the British Museum in Bloomsbury (Great Russell St.; Sat–Wed 10am–5.30pm, Thurs & Fri 10am–8.30pm; free), a world-famous museum with two-and-a-half miles of galleries and over seven million exhibits covering everything from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome through to China, India, Japan.

As the next stop on your museum tour, check out the National Gallery (Trafalgar Square; daily 10am–6pm, Wed until 9pm; free), one of the world’s most impressive collections of Western European paintings housed inside a gigantic Neoclassical building on Trafalgar Square. With over 2000 pieces on display dating from 1250 to about 1900, you’ll find a veritable who’s who of Western European masters here, including Botticelli, Titian, da Vinci, El Greco, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, and British noteables Turner and Constable.

You definitely shouldn’t leave the city without visiting one (or both) of the terrific Tate museums. Tate Britain (Milbank; daily 10am–5.50pm; free), located in West End’s Whitehall, has an outstanding collection of British art dating from the early 16th century to the present day, including the world’s largest collection of Turners. Its sister museum, the Tate Modern (Bankside; Sun–Thurs 10am–6pm, Fri & Sat 10am–10pm; permanent-collection free) occupies a converted power station in Southwark, on the other bank of the Thames, and ranks as London’s top destination for anyone interested in modern art, with a wide-ranging collection that includes Rodin, Giacometti, and Warhol, among others.

Finally, a good reason to wander beyond the West End is the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington (Cromwell Rd.; daily 10am–5.45pm, Wed & last Fri of the month until 10pm; free), better known as the V&A, a colossal place with a striking collection of applied arts from around the globe and different eras, its exhibits ranging from a 16th-century Italian harpsichord to a 15th-century altarpiece from Spain and a golden throne that belonged to one of the last Sikh emperors.

Parks & Gardens
You might not know that 30 percent of London is covered by open green spaces, including 143 registered parks and gardens which, unlike their show-offish Paris counterparts, have a more natural and less-manicured look and feel. These retreats are so precious that Londoners spend much of their free time here, and no visit to London would be complete without at least strolling through one of the city’s verdant gems.

Our favorite of the lot is Hyde Park, once famous as the hunting playground of Henry VIII and nowadays a sprawling stretch of marvelously landscaped greenery, complete with flowerbeds, ponds, scenic trails and a 41-acre lake. If you visit on a Sunday, do make a point of stopping by Speakers’ Corner, at the northeastern end, to catch a local standing on a soapbox and exercising his or her right to freedom of speech by ranting about everything from religion to local politics.

For a more serene slice of the park, wander through the adjoining 275-acre Kensington Gardens. It’s home to 178 bird species, a quartet of four fountains known as the Italian Gardens, the Victorian-inspired Albert Memorial and, the main draw, Kensington Palace (Mar.–Oct. daily 10am–6pm; Nov–Feb daily 10am–5pm; £11), the official residence of Princess Diana until her death in 1997. You’ll be able to visit the State Apartments and the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection but not the late princess’s private rooms – they’re closed to the public, alas.

Other attractions
For a unique way to admire London’s cityscape, take a ride on the hugely popular London Eye (South Bank; Oct.–May. 10am–8pm; June–Sept. 10am–9pm; £13), a slow-moving Ferris-wheel-like contraption with 32 passenger pods; the 30-minute ‘flight’ on this sleek structure (which happens to be the city’s sixth-tallest and weighs more than 250 double-decker buses) affords outstanding panoramic views of London. While you don’t have to, we nonetheless highly recommend that you book your ticket in advance – you won’t have to line up and you may also get a discounted rate. You can book online at www.ba-londoneye.com.

For a quirkier cultural stop, we particularly like Dalí Universe (Riverside Building, South Bank; daily 10am–6.30pm; £9.75), an homage to the celebrated surrealist maestro. You’ll find over 500 of Dalí’s lesser-known works on display in a labyrinthine space that does a pretty good job of being as out-there as the artist himself.

If design’s your thing, we urge you to visit the Design Museum in Southwark (28 Shad Thames; daily 10am–5.45pm; £7), considered to be Europe’s best. It’s housed in a converted 1950s warehouse and hosts changing exhibits that showcase consumer objects ranging from cars to household items and furniture.

History buffs can also learn about London’s vibrant past by visiting the engaging Museum of London (London Wall; Mon–Sat 10am–5.50pm, Sun noon–5.50pm; free). Close to two million artifacts can easily distract you here, including a 5100-year-old skeleton and the Lord Mayor’s Coach, an impressive 1757 horse-drawn carriage that’s still paraded around the city once a year as part of the Lord Mayor’s Show.

If you’re traveling with children, we suggest a trip to the London Aquarium on the South Bank (County Hall, Westminster Bridge Rd.; daily 10am–6pm; £11.75) home to one of Europe’s largest displays of global aquatic life, with over 3000 underwater creatures and 350 marine species. The London Zoo (daily mid-Feb to early-Mar & late-Oct 10am–4.30pm, early-Mar to late-Oct 10am–5.30pm, late-Oct to Feb 10am–4pm; £14) in Regent’s Park, is also a hoot: the 36-acre animal kingdom here dates from 1826 and contains 5000 animals in a delightful landscape of gardens, tunnels and bridges. For some scary fun, we recommend the London Dungeon (28–34 Tooley St.; daily 10am–5.30pm; £11.95), a Gothic extravaganza housed inside creepy underground vaults, with blood-curdling wax figure displays of murders, hangings, and tortures, and multimedia recreations of horrific event like the Great Fire of London, the Great Plague and Jack the Ripper murders, with well-executed special effects.