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What to see in London on foot
38 sights worth the detour, all walkable, all offline.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk London offline.
London is a city made for walking. This self-guided guide maps 38 of its sights worth the detour — landmarks, historic sites, viewpoints, museums and galleries and parks and gardens — the places locals point to and the tour buses skip, close enough to string into a single day on foot. Download the London pack in Voyage GO before you go and the whole route works offline: no roaming, no dead battery from a live map. Every monument, viewpoint and park you pass quietly fills your travel passport.
Landmarks20
- 1Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- 2Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- 3Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.
- 4Palace of WestminsterA working parliament whose rules, by tradition, still assume MPs might draw swords on each other.
- 5Wembley StadiumThe 133 m arch does real work: it carries the entire north roof and most of the retractable one — the world's longest unsupported roof structure.
- 6London BridgeA plain grey concrete slab, standing where the medieval bridge's drawbridge tower once displayed traitors' severed heads on spikes.
- 7Stamford BridgeThe turf where Chelsea play opened in 1877 as an athletics ground — footballers only arrived in 1905.
- 8St Paul's CathedralThe dome Londoners watched refuse to fall through the Blitz — Churchill ordered fire crews to save it above all else.
- 9Trafalgar SquareLondon's shared living room, built to crow about beating Napoleon's navy in 1805.
- 10Imperial College LondonA lone tower left standing on a lawn after the building around it was pulled down.
- 1110 Downing StreetThe UK Prime Minister's black front door can't be opened from the outside — someone inside always grants entry.
- 12Royal Opera HouseTwo theatres burned down on this Bow Street site before the third one stuck — now home to both the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet.
- 13Covent GardenA street stage since 1662 — even the buskers have to audition for their spot.
- 14New Scotland YardThe rotating sign outside the Met's riverside headquarters on Victoria Embankment — the name the world reads as "Scotland Yard."
- 15Piccadilly CircusThe junction so busy its name became British slang for a crowded place: "it's like Piccadilly Circus."
- 16Selhurst ParkCrystal Palace's home since 1924 — a four-sided South London ground where one end of seats sits on a supermarket roof.
- 17Royal Albert HallFor its first century the echo was so bad it was jokingly said this was the only place a composer could be sure of hearing his work twice.
- 18The GherkinA 180-metre glass bullet whose curved skin is an optical trick — only one pane on the whole tower is actually bent.
- 19Downing StreetBritain is run from a cheaply built 1680s terrace you can only glimpse through a gate.
- 20Westminster BridgeThe green paint isn't decoration — it's the House of Commons following you across the Thames.
Historic Sites8
- 21Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- 22Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- 23Royal Observatory GreenwichStraddle the courtyard line and you've got one foot in the eastern hemisphere, one in the western.
- 24White Hart LaneSpurs played here for 118 years — and its most ardent fans packed a side terrace, not the end behind the goal.
- 25Kensington PalaceQueen Victoria was born here in 1819 — and royals still live behind the museum's ropes.
- 26The Crystal PalaceThe giant glass hall that awed Victorian London burned down in a single November night in 1936 — you're walking its ghost.
- 27St James's PalaceHenry VIII's red-brick gatehouse still guards Pall Mall — and it's where Britain's new monarchs are proclaimed.
- 28Roman London (Londinium)Dig under the City and you hit a layer of red ash: Boudica's rebels burned this whole town to the ground in AD 60/61.
Viewpoints2
- 29London EyeThirty still minutes rising 135m over the Thames while London flattens out beneath your capsule.
- 30The ShardWestern Europe's tallest building — near the top, its deck opens straight to the sky, wind and all.
Museums & Galleries7
- 31British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- 32British LibraryMagna Carta, Beowulf, and the Lindisfarne Gospels all sit in one free gallery.
- 33National GallerySeven centuries of Western painting, Giotto to Cézanne, free on Trafalgar Square.
- 34Madame TussaudsMarie Tussaud modeled the French Revolution's victims and brought her death masks to London — and her own hands shaped figures still standing among today's celebrity-selfie waxworks.
- 35Tate ModernA riverside power station whose five-storey generator hall now swallows room-filling artworks.
- 36Victoria and Albert MuseumThe world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design — over 2.8 million objects, free to walk in.
- 37Natural History MuseumA 25-metre blue whale skeleton hangs at the heart of a terracotta cathedral of nature.
Parks & Gardens1
- 38Hyde Park350 acres in the middle of Westminster where, since 1872, anyone can stand up and shout their politics.
