Warner Bros. Studio Tour London — The Making of Harry Potter
Walk through the actual film sets, props and costumes from the Harry Potter movies at the working studio where all eight films were made, just outside London in Leavesden.
Kew Gardens
A UNESCO World Heritage botanic garden covering 132 hectares, home to the world's largest plant collection, an 1848 glass-and-iron Palm House, and a treetop walkway through ancient woodland.
Churchill War Rooms
Winston Churchill's underground Whitehall bunker, preserved exactly as it was left on the day WWII ended, with the Cabinet Room and Map Room untouched since 1945.
Shakespeare's Globe
A faithful reconstruction of Shakespeare's original open-air Bankside playhouse, 230 metres from the 1599 original, staging plays much as Elizabethan audiences saw them.
Tower of London
A nearly 1,000-year-old fortress on the Thames holding the Crown Jewels, the White Tower's medieval armouries, and a history of executions, imprisonments and royal intrigue.
Borough Market
London's oldest food market, trading in some form since at least 1014, now a dense warren of artisan food stalls, cheesemongers and street-food vendors under Victorian ironwork by London Bridge.
Royal Observatory Greenwich
Stand astride the Prime Meridian, the line that defines Greenwich Mean Time and splits the world into east and west, at the observatory Charles II founded in 1675 for navigation and astronomy.
British Library
The UK's national library and one of the world's great research collections, with a free Treasures Gallery holding a Magna Carta, Beatles lyrics and Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.
Maughan Library
King's College London's Gothic Revival main library, a former Public Record Office headquarters whose round Weston Room reading room is genuinely worth a look for its architecture alone.
HMS Belfast
A Royal Navy WWII cruiser permanently moored on the Thames near Tower Bridge, open to explore from the engine rooms to the gun turrets across nine decks.
Dennis Severs' House
A candlelit "still-life drama" through ten rooms of a Georgian Spitalfields house, arranged as if a Huguenot silk-weaving family had just stepped out.
Diana Memorial Playground
A free Peter Pan-themed playground in Kensington Gardens built in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, centred on a large wooden pirate ship for climbing and imaginative play.
Somerset House
A grand neoclassical courtyard on the Strand that hosts a summer fountain display, a winter ice rink and year-round free exhibitions, alongside the Courtauld Gallery.
Old Royal Naval College & Painted Hall
Christopher Wren's riverside masterpiece in Greenwich, its Painted Hall — dubbed "Britain's Sistine Chapel" — covered floor to ceiling in a vast baroque ceiling painting.
Up at The O2
A guided climb up a fabric walkway across the curved roof of The O2 arena, reaching a viewing platform 52 metres above the Greenwich Peninsula.
London Eye
A 135-metre observation wheel on the South Bank, built for the Millennium and now a permanent fixture — 30-minute rotations in glass capsules with views stretching up to 40km on a clear day.
The View from The Shard
Western Europe's tallest building, with viewing galleries on floors 68–72 offering the highest publicly accessible viewpoint in London — over twice the height of the London Eye.
Cutty Sark
The last surviving 19th-century tea clipper, preserved in dry dock at Greenwich and raised on stilts so visitors can walk directly beneath its copper-clad hull.
Guildhall Art Gallery
The City of London's free art collection above the surprise ruins of a Roman amphitheatre, discovered by archaeologists during the gallery's own construction in 1988.
Leadenhall Market
An ornate Victorian covered market in the heart of the City of London's financial district, its green-and-maroon ironwork instantly recognisable as a Harry Potter filming location.
Covent Garden
London's original planned public square, now a lively piazza of street performers, an indoor Apple Market, the Royal Opera House and London's oldest working theatre.
Neal's Yard
A tiny, dazzlingly colourful courtyard tucked behind Covent Garden's main streets, once a derelict service alley and now one of London's most photographed hidden corners.
Kensington Palace
A working royal residence and the childhood home of Queen Victoria and Princess Diana, its State Apartments now open to the public alongside a museum of royal fashion.
London Zoo
The world's oldest scientific zoo, founded in 1828 inside Regent's Park, home to over 300 species including tigers, gorillas and a walk-through penguin beach.
Portobello Road Market
London's largest antiques market, running the length of a Notting Hill street once made famous on film, busiest and best on Saturdays when the antiques stalls are in full swing.
Old Spitalfields Market
A Victorian covered market in the East End turned fashion, food and craft destination, with a history of feeding London stretching back to a 1638 royal licence.
Brick Lane
The East End's most famous street, a living record of successive immigrant communities from Huguenot weavers to Bengali curry houses, now also London's street art heartland.
Sky Garden
London's highest free public garden, spanning three storeys atop the "Walkie-Talkie" skyscraper with 360-degree views over the City and the Thames.
Monument to the Great Fire of London
A 61-metre Doric column by Christopher Wren, exactly as tall as its distance from where the Great Fire of 1666 began, with 311 steps to a viewing platform over the City.
Camden Market
A sprawling cluster of markets around Camden Lock on Regent's Canal — alternative fashion, global street food and live-music history, and one of London's most-visited free attractions.
Barbican Library
The largest lending library in the City of London, set inside the Brutalist Barbican Centre, worth a look for its striking 1980s architecture as much as its collection.
ArcelorMittal Orbit
Britain's tallest sculpture, a swirling red steel tower by Anish Kapoor in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with viewing platforms and the world's longest tunnel slide.
Madame Tussauds London
The original wax museum, founded by Marie Tussaud herself, with lifelike figures of royals, film stars and historical figures spread across themed zones on Marylebone Road.