Most London maps pin everything and rank nothing, which is how people end up spending £200 on attractions they didn’t enjoy. This one pins 36 sights and tells you, honestly, which are free, which are worth paying for and which take four minutes.
There are two versions below: an interactive Google map you can save to your phone and use offline, and a free printable one for when the battery goes. Every major sight in central London is on both.
Two things have changed recently that most maps haven’t caught up with. The Museum of London is gone – its replacement, the London Museum, opens at Smithfield on 28 November 2026 and will be free. And the Changing of the Guard is not daily, whatever you have read; it generally runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
For a route rather than a map, our Harry Potter walking tour of London links sixteen filming locations into a single day’s walking.
The interactive London tourist map
Save this to your phone before you travel, and download it for offline use so it works without data. Every numbered pin matches the list further down.
Click here to open and save the London sightseeing map.
Free printable tourist map of London
Phones die, roaming gets expensive and there is still something useful about a folded piece of paper in a pocket. Print this one before you come.
The 36 attractions on the map
Numbered to match the pins. Prices are for adults in September 2026 and are the online rate where one exists – turning up on the day is almost always more expensive.
1. Tower Bridge
£18, or £1 if you live in Tower Hamlets, Southwark or the City
The glass floor is the draw, but the free move is better: the bridge lifts around 800 times a year and the times are published online. Watch from Tower Wharf. Our Tower Bridge facts have the rest.
2. The Tower of London
£37, and there is no family ticket
Three hours minimum, and go at opening or after 3pm to beat the Crown Jewels queue. The Yeoman Warder tours are included and are the best free guiding in London. There is also a £1 means-tested ticket that almost nobody claims – see our Tower of London facts.
3. The Shard
around £32 for the View, free if you drink instead
The View from the Shard is the highest paid viewpoint in the city. You can get most of the way up for the price of a drink at Aqua Shard or Oblix, and nobody will stop you. We make the case in the best views in London.
4. The London Eye
from around £29 online
Thirty minutes, and genuinely lovely at dusk in winter when the whole city is lit. Book the timed slot online – turning up on the day costs more and means queueing twice.
5. Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard
free to watch; State Rooms ticketed in summer
Read this bit carefully: the Changing of the Guard is not daily. It generally runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am, and it gets cancelled in bad weather. Check the schedule the night before rather than building a morning around it. Our guide to the Changing of the Guard explains where to actually stand.
6. Horse Guards Parade
free
The quieter, better version of the same thing: the Household Cavalry mount guard here at 11am (10am Sundays), and you can get within a few feet. The Household Cavalry Museum next door is small and excellent.
7. Houses of Parliament and Big Ben
UK residents can tour free; international visitors from £31
The Elizabeth Tower climb – 334 steps, no lift – is now open to international visitors as well as UK residents, at around £55. Tickets are released at 10am on the second Wednesday of each month and go almost immediately. More in our Big Ben facts.
8. Westminster Abbey
around £30
Expensive, and worth it once: Poets’ Corner, the Coronation Chair and a thousand years of English history in one room. Free if you attend a service, though you won’t get to wander.
9. Trafalgar Square
free
The Fourth Plinth commission changes every couple of years and is one of the most reliable pieces of free public art in Britain – see the Fourth Plinth. The fountains have a stranger history than you’d guess.
10. Covent Garden
free
The Piazza is packed and the street performers are licensed and auditioned, which is why they’re better than the ones outside. Walk two minutes off it for Neal’s Yard and Seven Dials, which is where the actual pleasure is. Our Covent Garden guide has more.
11. Piccadilly Circus
free
Four minutes, a photograph of the lights, and on. It is a traffic junction with advertising, and pretending otherwise wastes an afternoon.
12. Leicester Square
free
Best used as a place you pass through on the way somewhere better, with one exception: the TKTS booth in the middle sells genuinely discounted same-day theatre tickets, and it is the only official one. See our Leicester Square guide.
13. The South Bank
free
The single best walk in central London – Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge along the water, taking in the National Theatre, the BFI, the book market under Waterloo Bridge and the skate park. Our South Bank guide and South Bank bars cover it.
14. Borough Market
free to browse
Go on a Wednesday or Thursday morning. Friday and Saturday are shoulder-to-shoulder and you will not enjoy it. The full Borough Market guide has what to eat.
15. Shakespeare’s Globe
standing tickets from £5
The £5 yard tickets are the best value in London theatre, full stop – you stand for three hours in the open air a few feet from the stage. Season runs roughly April to October. More in our Globe Theatre facts.
16. The Barbican
free to wander; exhibitions ticketed
A Grade II-listed concrete city with a conservatory, three cinemas, a concert hall and a lake. The Conservatory is free and open on selected days. Start with our brutalist London guide.
17. Madame Tussauds
from around £34 online
You already know whether you want to do this. If you do, book online and go at opening; walk-up prices are noticeably higher and the queue is the worst part.
18. ZSL London Zoo
from around £33 online
In Regent’s Park, and the oldest scientific zoo in the world. Book online for the cheaper rate, and go early – the animals are visibly more active before the crowds arrive.
19. Somerset House
free courtyard; exhibitions ticketed
The courtyard fountains in summer and the ice rink in winter are both free to look at. The Courtauld Gallery is in the same building and holds one of the best small collections of Impressionists in Europe. See our Somerset House guide.
20. HMS Belfast
around £25
A Second World War cruiser you can climb all over, from the boiler rooms to the gun turrets. Better than it sounds and much better with children.
21. National Theatre
free to enter; tickets from £20
You can walk in, use the bars and the bookshop and look at the building without a ticket. Backstage tours run most days. It is also one of the best buildings in London to be inside on a wet afternoon.
22. The London Dungeon
from around £30 online
Actors, drops and jump scares rather than history. Fine if that’s what you want; not if you were hoping to learn about the plague.
23. The Gherkin
free to look at
30 St Mary Axe is not routinely open to the public, though the top-floor restaurant takes bookings. The better City viewpoint is the Sky Garden two streets away, and it’s free.
24. St Paul’s Cathedral
around £26
The dome climb is 528 steps and the Whispering Gallery is worth every one of them. Free if you attend Evensong at 5pm on weekdays – you won’t get the galleries, but you will get the building and the choir.
25. Sky Garden
free, but you must book
Three storeys of planting at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street with a 360-degree view, and it costs nothing. Slots open online three weeks ahead on Mondays and go fast. Our Sky Garden guide has the booking trick.
26. National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery
both free
Note the change: the National Gallery’s main entrance is now the Sainsbury Wing, not the central portico, after its 2025 refurbishment. Two of the great free collections in the world, thirty seconds apart. More in our free museums guide.
27. Tate Modern
free; big shows ticketed
The Turbine Hall commission is free and often the best thing in it. Go up to the Blavatnik Building viewing level for a free view straight down the river to St Paul’s.
28. The British Museum
free
Eight million objects and no entry charge. Go in through the Montague Place entrance at the back to skip the queue on Great Russell Street, and pick two galleries rather than trying to do it all.
29. London Transport Museum
around £26, and the ticket lasts a year
In the old flower market in Covent Garden, and the annual pass model makes it one of the better-value paid museums in London if you’re here more than once.
30. Churchill War Rooms
around £33
The underground bunker left almost exactly as it was on the day the lights went out in 1945. Book a timed slot; it is small and it fills.
31. Imperial War Museum
free; some exhibitions ticketed
The Holocaust Galleries and the First World War galleries are among the best-designed museum spaces in the country. Free, and emotionally heavy – don’t schedule anything cheerful straight after.
32. London Museum, Smithfield
free, opening 28 November 2026
The biggest museum story in London for a decade. The old Museum of London closed at London Wall in 2022; its replacement opens in the Victorian General Market building at Smithfield on 28 November 2026, and it will be free. If you’re visiting after that date, put it at the top of the list.
33. Hyde Park
free
350 acres, the Serpentine, Speakers’ Corner on a Sunday morning and two free contemporary art galleries in the Serpentine pavilions.
34. Regent’s Park
free
Queen Mary’s Gardens hold 12,000 roses and peak in the first half of June. Primrose Hill at the north end has the best free skyline view in London.
35. St James’s Park
free
The prettiest of the royal parks and the one with the pelicans, fed at 2.30pm daily. The view from the bridge back towards Buckingham Palace is the one on the postcards.
36. Green Park
free
Deliberately flowerless – no beds, just grass and plane trees – and the best place in central London to lie down for twenty minutes between two other things.
How to use this map without wasting your trip
- Do the free ones first. The British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, the Imperial War Museum, Sky Garden and all four parks cost nothing. That is a full three days without a ticket.
- Book the timed ones before you fly. Sky Garden, the Churchill War Rooms and the Elizabeth Tower all run on slots that go weeks ahead.
- Check the Changing of the Guard schedule the night before. It is the single most common wasted morning in London.
- Walk between the pins wherever they’re under 25 minutes apart. London looks bigger on the tube map than it is on the ground, and the walking is the good part.
- An attraction pass only pays off at four or more paid sights a day, which is more than most people enjoy doing.
The London x London Take: Use the map to plan geographically, not by interest. London’s attractions cluster tightly – you can do the Tower, Tower Bridge and Borough Market in a morning, or Westminster, the parks and Trafalgar Square in an afternoon, but doing one from each cluster in a day means you will spend it on the Circle line. Pick a cluster, walk it, and you will see twice as much.
Read next
- Two days in London: a proper itinerary
- London’s best sightseeing attractions
- 45 free things to do in London
- The best free museums in London
- The best views in London, without paying
- London in winter
- Where to stay in London: the best areas
- What’s left of Roman London
- The best parks in north London
- Where to eat around London Bridge
- The BFI Mediatheque: free film archive on the South Bank
