Explore London

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.

Temple Church was built by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters and consecrated in 1185. Its round nave, modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, holds 13th-century stone effigies of knights, and the rectangular chancel was added in 1240. It belongs today to the Inner and Middle Temple Inns of Court.

Handel Hendrix House is a museum in Mayfair at 25 and 23 Brook Street. George Frideric Handel lived at number 25 from 1723 until his death in 1759 and wrote most of his later works there; Jimi Hendrix lived next door in the late 1960s. Visitors see Handel's restored Georgian rooms and the Hendrix flat, returned to its 1960s appearance.

The Royal Mews is the working stables and carriage house of the royal household in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, built to designs by John Nash and completed in 1825. Visitors see the state carriages and coaches used at coronations, royal weddings and state visits, including the Gold State Coach, as well as the harness rooms and the stables of the carriage horses.

Westminster Cathedral is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster and the seat of its archbishop. Designed by John Francis Bentley in a neo-Byzantine style and built of striped brick and stone in 1895–1903, it has chapels lined with mosaics and marble, Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross and a bell tower with a viewing gallery.

Wellington Arch is a triumphal arch at Hyde Park Corner, designed by Decimus Burton and built in 1826–1830 as part of a ceremonial approach to Buckingham Palace. Moved to its present site in 1882–83, it has carried Adrian Jones's bronze quadriga of Peace since 1912; inside are exhibition rooms and balconies looking over the junction.

Apsley House is the London townhouse of the Dukes of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner. Robert Adam designed it for Lord Apsley in the 1770s, and the 1st Duke of Wellington enlarged it after 1817. Its state rooms show the Wellington Collection, with paintings by Velázquez and Goya and Canova's colossal marble statue of Napoleon.

Tate Britain on Millbank shows British art from the 1500s to the present day. The gallery opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art, funded by the sugar refiner Henry Tate, in a building by Sidney R. J. Smith; the adjoining Clore Gallery by James Stirling holds the Turner Bequest of paintings and drawings by J. M. W. Turner.

The Imperial War Museum in Southwark covers conflicts involving Britain and the Commonwealth from the First World War to the present day. Founded in 1917, it has occupied the domed former Bethlem Royal Hospital since 1936; two 15-inch naval guns stand at the entrance, and the atrium displays aircraft, a V-2 rocket and a Second World War tank.

Tate Modern is the national gallery of international modern and contemporary art, opened in 2000 in the former Bankside Power Station designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Its collection displays of art from 1900 to the present fill the converted boiler house and the Blavatnik Building extension, and the Turbine Hall hosts large commissions.

The Millennium Bridge is a steel suspension footbridge across the Thames linking Bankside, by Tate Modern, with the City of London below St Paul's Cathedral. Designed by Foster and Partners, Arup and the sculptor Anthony Caro, it opened in June 2000, closed two days later because it swayed, and reopened in 2002 after dampers were fitted.

Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the open-air Elizabethan playhouse for which William Shakespeare wrote many of his plays, built on Bankside in Southwark and completed in 1997. Guided tours lead into the timber-framed, thatched theatre, and the complex also holds the candlelit indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

The Wallace Collection is a national museum in Hertford House on Manchester Square, the former London townhouse of the Marquesses of Hertford. Bequeathed to the nation in 1897 and opened in 1900, its 25 galleries show Old Master paintings, French 18th-century paintings, furniture and porcelain, and a large collection of arms and armour.

St Paul's Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral of the Diocese of London on Ludgate Hill, rebuilt to designs by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London and completed in 1710. Visitors walk the nave beneath its 111-metre dome, can climb to the dome galleries, and see the crypt with the tombs of Nelson, Wellington and Wren.

Moco Museum London is the London branch of the Moco (Modern Contemporary) Museum, an independent museum founded in Amsterdam in 2016 that also has a site in Barcelona. It opened in 2024 in a corner building at Marble Arch and shows modern, contemporary, street and digital art in changing displays.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, housed since 1997–98 in a red-brick building by Colin St John Wilson beside St Pancras station. Visitors can see the Treasures Gallery with manuscripts and early printed books, temporary exhibitions and the glass tower holding King George III's library.

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.

Borough Market is a food market beside London Bridge station in Southwark, on a site where a market has been recorded since at least the 12th century. Its iron-and-glass halls date largely from the 1850s; traders sell produce, cheese, meat, fish and bread alongside street-food stalls, and the portico of Covent Garden's Floral Hall was re-erected here in 2004.

Madame Tussauds London is the wax museum founded in 1835 by the French wax sculptor Marie Tussaud; it has occupied its building on Marylebone Road since 1884. Visitors walk through themed rooms with wax figures of royals, politicians, athletes, musicians and film characters, beside the green dome of the former London Planetarium.

Southwark Cathedral stands by the southern end of London Bridge on a site of Christian worship for more than a thousand years. The Gothic church, built between 1220 and 1420 for an Augustinian priory and given a new nave in the late 19th century, became the cathedral of the Diocese of Southwark in 1905.