Central London is small. That is the thing most visitors get wrong. Covent Garden to Mayfair is a twenty minute walk, and almost everything worth doing sits inside a rectangle you could cross on foot in under an hour. This is Zone 1 only, sorted by how far you are willing to go.
If you have half a day
Start at the National Gallery. It is free, it is open late on Fridays, and unlike most great collections you can do the highlights in ninety minutes without feeling cheated. Walk out into Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall, and you have the whole of official London in one straight line.
Then cross the river at Westminster and walk back along the South Bank to Waterloo. It is the best flat walk in the city, the views are free, and there is a second-hand book market under Waterloo Bridge that has been there for decades.
If you want art without the crowds
The Courtauld at Somerset House is the one to know. A small, extremely good collection, and quiet in a way the National Gallery never is. The Wallace Collection in Marylebone is the other: a Georgian townhouse full of armour, Old Masters and furniture, with a glazed courtyard restaurant in the middle. Both are ten minutes from Oxford Street and neither is ever full.
The neighbourhoods, in order of usefulness
Soho is where you eat and drink. Dense, small, and best explored on foot with no plan. Everything is within four streets of everything else.
Covent Garden is a tourist trap at its centre and genuinely good around the edges. Skip the piazza with the street performers, walk two streets north to Seven Dials and Neal’s Yard, and it becomes a different place.
Mayfair and St James’s are for a particular kind of evening: hotel bars, old shops, jacket required. Quiet at night in a way central London usually is not. Our best bars guide is heavily weighted to this part of town for a reason.
Marylebone is the one Londoners recommend and visitors never reach. A high street that still has independent shops, the Wallace Collection at one end, and Regent’s Park at the other.
Parks, which are better than you expect
St James’s Park is the prettiest and has the best view in London from the bridge across the lake: Buckingham Palace one way, the towers of Whitehall the other. Green Park is next to it and is essentially a large collection of deckchairs. Regent’s Park is the grandest, and the rose garden in the inner circle in June is worth a detour from anywhere.
What to skip
The London Eye. Long queue, high price, and the view is largely of a city that looks better from the ground.
Oxford Street. There is nothing there you cannot get elsewhere with less shoving. If you want to shop, Regent Street and Jermyn Street are two minutes away and considerably more pleasant.
Leicester Square. Walk through it. Do not stop.
Getting around
Walk more than you think. Central London Tube journeys are often slower than walking once you count the stairs and the platform. Covent Garden to Leicester Square is one stop and about four minutes on foot.
Contactless works everywhere. Tap in and out with a card or phone, no ticket needed, and the daily cap means you cannot overspend.
The buses are better for sightseeing than any tour bus. The 11 and the 15 both run through most of central London for the price of a normal fare.
Where to end up
Central London empties out after the theatres go in. If you want somewhere to be at eleven, Soho is the answer and essentially always has been. If you want somewhere quieter, the hotel bars in Mayfair and St James’s keep going and are at their best once the early evening crowd has left.
For the version of this that goes further afield, cool things to do in London covers the neighbourhoods outside Zone 1 that are worth the journey. For the genuinely strange, try unique things to do in London. Both sit under our main guide to what to do in London.