Explore London

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The Sky Garden occupies the top floors of 20 Fenchurch Street, the City of London tower nicknamed the 'Walkie-Talkie', designed by Rafael Viñoly and completed in 2014. Under a glass roof, terraced planting rises beside viewing areas and an open-air terrace that look out over the Thames and the City; visits are by timed ticket.

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.

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.

Tower Bridge is a bascule and suspension bridge over the Thames beside the Tower of London, designed by Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry and opened in 1894. Its two 65-metre towers are joined by high-level walkways with glass floors, and the Victorian engine rooms that once powered the lifting roadway are open to visitors.

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.