Udforsk London

Trafalgar Square is a public square in Westminster, laid out by John Nash and opened in 1844, named after the naval battle of 1805. Nelson's Column, 52 metres high, stands at its centre between two fountains, and the square is framed by the National Gallery, St Martin-in-the-Fields and the Fourth Plinth with its changing artworks.

The National Gallery on the north side of Trafalgar Square holds the national collection of Western European painting, more than 2,300 works from the mid-13th century to 1900. Founded in 1824, it opened in William Wilkins's building in 1838, and its rooms range from Giotto and Raphael to Titian, Rembrandt, Turner and Cézanne.

The National Portrait Gallery holds portraits of people who shaped British history and culture, from Tudor monarchs to present-day figures. Founded in 1856, it moved in 1896 to its building on St Martin's Place next to the National Gallery, which reopened in 2023 after a three-year renovation with a new entrance.

The Household Cavalry Museum occupies part of Horse Guards, the 18th-century building on Whitehall that is still the headquarters of the Household Division. It tells the history of the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals through uniforms, standards and personal stories, and a glazed partition looks into the working stables of the King's Life Guard.

The Churchill War Rooms are the underground command centre beneath the Treasury building in Whitehall, used by Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet from 1939 to 1945. Run by the Imperial War Museum and open since 1984, they show the Cabinet Room and the Map Room as they were left in 1945, plus a museum on Churchill's life.

Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space in London's West End, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. The corner building on its northern side carries a large curved video display, and the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, topped by an aluminium figure of Anteros often taken for Eros, stands on the plaza.

The London Transport Museum occupies the iron-and-glass flower market building of 1871 on Covent Garden Piazza and opened there in 1980. It traces the history of the city's transport with buses, trams, trolleybuses and Underground carriages, among them the first electric Tube train of 1890, as well as posters and driving simulators.

Covent Garden is a district on the eastern edge of the West End, centred on a piazza laid out by Inigo Jones in the 1630s with St Paul's Church on its west side. The market building of 1830 by Charles Fowler, once London's fruit-and-vegetable market, now holds shops, cafés and stalls, and street performers work in the square.

The London Eye is a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the Thames beside County Hall, opened to the public in March 2000 as the Millennium Wheel. It is 135 metres tall with a diameter of 120 metres, and its 32 enclosed capsules turn slowly, giving views over Westminster, the river and central London.

The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is the home of The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, known together as the Royal Ballet and Opera since 2024. The present theatre, the third on the site, opened in 1858; its façade, foyer and auditorium survive, while most of the complex was rebuilt in the 1990s, when the iron-and-glass Floral Hall became a public foyer.

St James's Park is a 23-hectare Royal Park in Westminster, first enclosed as a deer park for Henry VIII in the 1530s. A long lake with Duck Island and a colony of pelicans runs through it, and the park is framed by The Mall, Buckingham Palace, Horse Guards and Birdcage Walk.

Big Ben is the name of the Great Bell in the clock tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, and by extension of the tower itself, renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012. Designed by Augustus Pugin and Charles Barry in Perpendicular Gothic style and completed in 1859, the 96-metre tower has four clock dials 6.9 metres across.

Somerset House is a neoclassical building complex on the Strand, designed by Sir William Chambers and begun in 1776 on the site of a Tudor palace to house government offices. Today it is an arts centre: visitors cross its large courtyard with floor fountains, walk the river terrace and see changing exhibitions and events.

Sea Life London Aquarium occupies part of County Hall on the South Bank of the Thames, beside Westminster Bridge and the London Eye. Opened in 1997 and part of the Sea Life chain since 2009, it shows sharks, penguins, turtles, seahorses, octopuses and coral reef fish in a series of themed zones.

Westminster Abbey is a Gothic church in Westminster, begun in 1245 under Henry III on the site of Edward the Confessor's abbey. It has been the coronation church since 1066 and holds the tombs of 18 monarchs and more than 3,300 burials in all. Visitors see the Henry VII Lady Chapel, Poets' Corner and the cloisters.

The Palace of Westminster, known as the Houses of Parliament, is where the House of Commons and the House of Lords meet, on the north bank of the Thames. After a fire in 1834 it was rebuilt in Gothic Revival style to designs by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin from 1840, keeping the 11th-century Westminster Hall. Its Elizabeth Tower holds the bell known as Big Ben.

Buckingham Palace is the official London residence and office of the British monarch. Built in 1703 as Buckingham House, it was bought by George III in 1761 and enlarged by John Nash and Edward Blore; Queen Victoria was the first monarch to live here, from 1837. Visitors tour the State Rooms, and the Changing of the Guard takes place in the forecourt.

Sir John Soane's Museum is the former home and studio of the architect Sir John Soane on Lincoln's Inn Fields, kept as he left it at his death in 1837 under an Act of Parliament of 1833. Its narrow, top-lit rooms are packed with antiquities, architectural fragments, models and paintings, including Hogarth's series A Rake's Progress.

The King's Gallery, formerly the Queen's Gallery, is the public art gallery of Buckingham Palace, opened in 1962 on the site of the palace chapel bombed in the Second World War. Enlarged by John Simpson and reopened in 2002 with a Doric entrance portico, it shows changing exhibitions of paintings, drawings and other works from the Royal Collection.

The British Museum in Bloomsbury is a museum of human history, art and culture, founded in 1753 and open to the public since 1759. Its Greek Revival building by Robert Smirke surrounds the glass-roofed Great Court, and its collection of about eight million objects includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures and Assyrian palace reliefs.