Explore London

Leadenhall Market is a covered market in the City of London whose history goes back to the 14th century. The present cobbled arcades and ornate roof of iron and glass, painted green, maroon and cream, were designed by Sir Horace Jones in 1881. Today it houses shops, pubs and restaurants.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a national museum of art and design in South Kensington, founded in 1852. Its collection of more than 2.8 million objects spans 5,000 years: ceramics, glass, textiles, fashion, jewellery, furniture, sculpture, prints and photography. The Cromwell Road front with its crowned tower was designed by Aston Webb.

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.

The Science Museum is a national museum of science and technology on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, founded in 1857. Its galleries cover steam power, flight, space, computing and medicine, with objects such as the Apollo 10 command module, and the interactive Wonderlab gallery explains scientific principles through experiments.

The Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in South Kensington occupies a terracotta-clad building by Alfred Waterhouse, opened in 1881. Its collections hold some 80 million specimens in botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology; a blue whale skeleton hangs in the vaulted central hall, and the galleries show dinosaur skeletons.

Camden Market is a group of adjoining markets in Camden Town, north of Camden Lock on the Regent's Canal, partly housed in the former Pickfords stables. It grew from a small Sunday crafts market opened in 1974 into a complex of stalls and shops selling clothing, crafts, second-hand goods and street food from many countries.

The Design Museum in Kensington shows product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran at Shad Thames, it moved in 2016 into the former Commonwealth Institute, a listed 1960s building with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof, where the collection display Designer Maker User fills the top floor.

Kenwood House is a stately home on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath. Robert Adam remodelled the late 17th-century house from 1764 for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, adding the library and the Ionic portico. Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, gave it to the nation in 1927 with his paintings by artists such as Rembrandt and Gainsborough.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich covers Britain's history at sea. Opened by King George VI in 1937 in the former Royal Hospital School buildings on the edge of Greenwich Park, it holds more than two million items, including maritime paintings, maps, ship models, navigational instruments and objects linked to Nelson and Captain Cook.

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.