Explore London

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.

Hyde Park is a Royal Park of 140 hectares in central London, taken by Henry VIII as a hunting ground in 1536 and opened to the public in 1637. The Serpentine lake runs through it, Speakers' Corner has been a place of public debate since 1872, and the park held the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace.

Regent's Park is a Royal Park of about 170 hectares in north-west central London, laid out in the early 19th century to designs by John Nash for the Prince Regent. It has a boating lake, Queen Mary's Gardens with their large rose collection, wide sports fields and an open-air theatre, and London Zoo occupies its northern edge.

Greenwich Park is a former royal hunting park in south-east London and, enclosed in 1433, the first of the city's Royal Parks to be walled in. Its 74 hectares rise to the Royal Observatory on the Prime Meridian, and the hilltop looks over the Queen's House and the Old Royal Naval College to the Thames and Canary Wharf.