10 Downing Street
The UK Prime Minister's black front door can't be opened from the outside — someone inside always grants entry.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk London offline.
One black door fronts roughly 100 rooms and the working office of the UK Prime Minister — one of the two-storey town houses Sir George Downing built between 1682 and 1684.
What to look for
- The zero in the number "10" is painted in an eccentric style, tilted 37 degrees anticlockwise.
- The brass letter slot reads "First Lord of the Treasury," not "Prime Minister," below a black iron lion's-head knocker.
- The "black" brickwork is a con: the bricks were yellow, blackened by two centuries of pollution, then painted to keep the sooty look.
It's the sitting PM's real home and office, not a museum.
10 Downing Street is one of 40 sights worth the detour in London, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the London pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in London
- British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.