Things to Do
What to actually do in London when you have limited time and no interest in the tourist trail. Written for short stays, weighted toward the evening.
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The landmark pages carry the numbers the attractions themselves bury. The queue at the London Eye runs up to forty five minutes on top of your ticket time rather than inside it, and the Harry Potter Studio Tour sells a package with a hotel in it for less than the one with a bus. The Shard, Sky Garden and Horizon 22 cover the views from above, and two of the three cost nothing.
Then the free half of the city: the parks, the museums that charge nothing and the food markets, where the published closing times regularly contradict each other on the market’s own website.
Seasonal pages appear when they are useful and are rechecked rather than recycled. Rain, weekends and Christmas each have their own.
Free Things to Do in London: What the City Gives Away
The best of London charges nothing, and that is deliberate policy rather than a discount. The free collections worth crossing town for, and the 27 pound ticket you never needed to buy.
Every London Exhibition List Is Undated. Here Are the Closing Dates.
The permanent collections are free and always have been. Only the temporary shows charge. How timed entry works, when membership pays, and what to do when it is sold out.
Things to Do in London This Weekend: The Ones Always On
Columbia Road is Sundays only. Broadway Market runs 52 weeks a year. What is on every London weekend, which day each thing runs, and what shuts early.
The Best Day Trips from London: Which Ones Survive Being Done in a Day
Windsor works in half a day, Bath needs the whole one, and Brighton is better overnight. Which trips are worth the fare, and why booking on the day costs more.
London Travel Guide for Americans: What Is Actually Different
You now need a 20 pound ETA before you fly, your restaurant bill already includes the tip, and your trainers will fail the door. What Americans get wrong in London.
Cool Things to Do in London That Are Not the London Eye
The London worth your weekend: late gallery openings, hidden glasshouses, the right markets on the right days, and where people who live here actually go.
Things to Do in Central London, Zone 1 Only
Everything worth doing inside Zone 1, sorted by how far you are willing to walk. What to see, what to skip, and why you should walk more than you think.
Unique Things to Do in London You Have Not Done
Strange museums, houses left exactly as they were, and buildings that should not still be standing. Fifteen genuinely unusual things to do, most of them free.
By area
2 neighbourhoodsThe neighbourhood guides that cover this, with the number of venues each one checks. Every address, price and opening time in them was taken from the venue's own published information.
Elsewhere in the guide
Questions we get asked
What can you do in London for free?
The national museums, which includes the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate galleries, the V and A and the Natural History Museum. Permanent collections are free and always have been; only the temporary exhibitions charge.
How many days do you need in London?
Three gets you the centre without rushing it. Five lets you spend a day outside zone one, which is where London stops being a list of sights and starts being a city. Anything under two days is a transit stop rather than a visit.
What is worth doing in London in bad weather?
Most of the best of it is indoors anyway. The museums, the department stores, afternoon tea, the pubs that have been there for centuries, and the theatre. London is not a city whose case rests on the weather.