Places to explore near London

Nelson's Column and the National Gallery at the heart of London.

0.1 km N

The river from its Cotswold trickle to the Thames Barrier — the gentlest long walk in Britain.

0.4 km E · spans 7 counties

London's oldest royal park, enclosed by Henry VIII, with pelicans kept here since 1664.

0.5 km SW

Barry and Pugin's Gothic home of Parliament, rebuilt after the 1834 fire around medieval Westminster Hall, with Big Ben in the Elizabeth Tower.

0.9 km S

Coronation church of England’s monarchs since 1066.

0.9 km S

One of the Royal Parks, walled by Charles II in 1660 — just trees and grass.

1.1 km W

The monarch's London palace, its State Rooms open each summer.

1.4 km SW

Wellington's townhouse at Hyde Park Corner, nicknamed Number One London, filled with his paintings and Canova's colossal nude statue of Napoleon.

1.7 km W

Wren's domed cathedral on Ludgate Hill, finished in 1710 after the Great Fire, with its Whispering Gallery and the tombs of Nelson and Wellington.

2.2 km E

London's great royal park of the Serpentine and Speakers' Corner.

2.3 km W

Planting threaded through brutalist walkways on the site of London's first public park.

2.7 km NE

London to Birmingham by water — the trunk route of the canal age, with arms reaching Leicester, Aylesbury, Northampton and Paddington.

3.3 km NW · spans 9 counties

Queen Caroline's 1720s pleasure garden, with J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan statue by the Long Water.

3.5 km W

Victorian bascule bridge beside the Tower of London, opened in 1894, with glass-floored high walkways and steam-age engine rooms.

3.6 km E

William the Conqueror's Thames fortress, home of the Crown Jewels.

3.6 km E

A Victorian burial ground of 1839 where Karl Marx and George Eliot lie.

6.7 km N

London's first public park, opened in 1845 and long known as the People's Park.

6.8 km NE

The Bishops of London's country home for over a thousand years, with a 1490s Tudor courtyard.

7.2 km SW

An Edwardian pergola of stone columns and wisteria built for soap magnate Lord Leverhulme.

7.5 km NW

One of London's Magnificent Seven Victorian garden cemeteries, opened in 1837.

8.5 km S

Royal park climbing to the Observatory and the Prime Meridian.

9.3 km E

London's flood defence across the tideway at Woolwich — ten steel gates that rise from the riverbed when a surge threatens the city.

11.4 km E

World Heritage botanic garden of the Palm House and the Pagoda.

12.7 km W

London's largest royal park, roamed by red and fallow deer.

12.8 km SW

The triangular Georgian tower folly on Shooter's Hill, its viewing platform looking out over London and, on a clear day, seven counties.

13.9 km E

A 1470s medieval Great Hall grafted onto a 1930s Art Deco Courtauld mansion.

14 km SE

A 1720s Palladian villa built for a royal mistress, with Alexander Pope's input.

14.2 km SW

A rare survival of a grand Stuart house, with formal 17th-century gardens right on the Thames at Richmond

14.7 km SW

The non-tidal Thames — 45 locks of managed river between Cricklade's meadows and the tideway at Teddington.

15.5 km SW · spans 7 counties

A Robert Adam mansion and its lakes, hemmed in by the west London suburbs but still a proper green escape

15.6 km W

Horace Walpole's self-styled little Gothic castle of 1749, which launched the Gothic Revival.

16.3 km SW · London

Henry VIII's Thames-side palace, with Wren's baroque wing and the maze.

17.7 km SW

William Morris's own home in Bexleyheath, the house where the Arts and Crafts idea took shape

18.8 km E

Hertfordshire's grand circuit from the Royce Stone at Royston — chalk streams, commons and country houses for nearly 200 miles.

21.2 km N · Hertfordshire

The 2012 Olympic white-water course near Waltham Cross, open for rafting and kayaking over the rapids.

21.6 km N

Norman church said to hold King Harold's grave.

22.1 km NE

Charles Darwin's home for forty years, where he wrote On the Origin of Species.

23.3 km SE

Wooded ridges and heathy commons an hour from London, with gentle hills and paths made for an easy day out

23.9 km S

Early English landscape garden with a grass amphitheatre, lake and island pavilion, worked on by Vanbrugh, Bridgeman, Kent and Brown.

24 km SW

Vast oak-framed barn of the 1420s built for Winchester College near Heathrow, which John Betjeman called the Cathedral of Middlesex.

24.4 km W

Chalk hills, ancient woods and orchards, ending in the white cliffs above the Channel

24.8 km SE

Lutyens's plain Portland stone war memorial in the middle of Whitehall, unveiled in 1920 and the focus of Remembrance Sunday each November.

0.5 km S

A ribbon of green on land reclaimed when Bazalgette built his great embankment.

0.6 km E

A National Trust place in London.

0.8 km SW

Moated stone tower of the 1360s built to hold Edward III's personal treasure, one of the few survivors of the medieval Palace of Westminster.

0.9 km S

A National Trust place in London.

1 km NE

A National Trust place in London.

1.5 km N

Decimus Burton's 1820s triumphal arch on Hyde Park Corner, crowned by Adrian Jones's bronze quadriga, the largest bronze sculpture in Europe.

1.7 km W

An Inn of Court whose garden, The Walks, was laid out partly under Francis Bacon.

1.7 km NE

A Bloomsbury burial ground of 1714, reopened as a public garden among old headstones and mature trees.

2.2 km N