Things to do

The best experiences London has to offer, from free days out and date ideas to unusual activities and neighbourhood guides for every corner of the city.

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

There is no daily summer ceremony any more: how the Changing of the Guard actually works now

Three children in yellow hard hats and hi-vis vests digging through wood chips in a wooden trench with trowels and scoops at London Museum Docklands

The Little Londoners Festival: mudlarking and a mini disco at the London Museum Docklands

A green marble table laid with a whole roast fish in sauce with chanterelles, a sliced bone-in steak, chips, salad, bearnaise and glasses of wine

A martini washed in beef fat from the butcher two doors down: Dockley Road is the Bermondsey restaurant hiding inside a wholesale food market

WFH in London

Free wifi, a big table and nobody watching the clock: 18 London cafes to work from

Hampstead Hill Gardens + Pergola

Thirteen free acres by the Thames, open at 7am: 28 London gardens worth crossing town for

Birthdays in London

What do you actually do for a birthday in London once you have done the bottomless brunch?

Woman laughing in the ball pit at Ballie Ballerson, London's adult soft play bar

Ball pits, shuffleboard and a fairground rebuilt for grown-ups: soft play for adults in London

The ruins of St Dunstan in the East

Go early, go south and skip Tower Bridge: 43 Instagrammable places in London

Churchill Arms

Kensington’s best things to do, from a Victorian pet cemetery to a Japanese garden on a bombed mansion

Margate beach and the seafront

Forty day trips from London, sorted by how long the train actually takes

The Painted Hall ceiling at Greenwich

31 hidden gems in London, most of them free and nearly all of them empty

Brick Lane on a market day

24-hour beigels, five markets and a Huguenot silk grid: the insider’s guide to Brick Lane

Soho London

Skip Carnaby Street: The Best Things to do in Soho

A figure in an oxygen mask with wild grey hair reaching through a smashed window in a dark smoke-filled room

One shared torch and a retirement home where everyone has vanished: Thorpe Park Fright Nights opens its first pitch-black maze

The hand-painted green Phoenix Garden sign reading a haven for wildlife and people, beside a wooden noticeboard on a sunlit brick path

Phoenix Garden: the last of Covent Garden’s seven community gardens is a bomb site with the West End’s only frogs

London Transport Museum hides 320,000 objects in Acton, and it’s opening the doors for three days this month

Westminster Abbey

Westminster’s best things to do, from Big Ben’s Gothic tower to a Sherlock Holmes-themed Victorian pub

Natural History Museum

West London’s best things to do, from Kew Gardens’ glasshouses to the maze at Hampton Court Palace

Victoria

Victoria’s best things to do, from a cathedral’s secret viewing tower to afternoon tea at The Goring

Leake Street Tunnel

Waterloo’s best things to do, from an underground arts venue below the station to Salvador Dalí’s sculptures at County Hall