A free self-guided Shoreditch street art tour: 18 walls, three hours and a world of colour

In August 2024 Banksy put three monkeys on the railway bridge over Brick Lane. They were gone by December, jet-washed off within four months. Half a mile south, ROA’s seven-storey crane has been on the side of a building on Hanbury Street since 2010. That gap is the whole thing you need to understand about walking Shoreditch for street art.

Walls here turn over in weeks. The pieces we photographed for this walk are, for the most part, long gone, and the ones that replaced them will be too.

So this version does it differently. It sends you to the walls rather than the pieces. Eighteen of them, in walking order, each one marked according to whether it is a curated wall that reliably has something on it or a free-for-all where you take your chances. The photographs stay, because they are ours and because the turnover is the point: this is what these walls have carried. Several of these walls also make our most photogenic places in London.

The route

Start at Old Street, finish at Liverpool Street, and the whole thing is about three hours if you stop and look properly. Roughly two if you march. Everything is within a square mile and the walking itself is flat and easy.

You can run it backwards from Liverpool Street if that suits your day better, or join at Shoreditch High Street and pick up stops 1 to 4 at the end. There is more of this sort of thing in our self-guided London walks.

Before you set off

Go on a weekday morning. Brick Lane on a Sunday is wall-to-wall people and you will photograph the backs of heads. Early on a Tuesday you will have most of these walls to yourself, and the light is better down the narrow streets before the sun is overhead.

Look up, and look at the bins. A lot of the best small work is above head height or on the least promising surfaces. Not even the bins on Brick Lane have escaped.

Do not expect to see what is in these photographs. That is not a caveat, it is the appeal. There are few things we like more than a few hours here watching new pieces go up and lamenting old favourites that have gone. It is one of the better free things to do in the city, and sits alongside the other places Londoners walk past every day.

The walk, stop by stop

1. New Inn Yard

Off Great Eastern Street. Lucky dip

Turn left off Great Eastern Street and you are into the small triangle of New Inn Yard, King John Court and Holywell Lane, which is packed with work and has been for years. Come before nine if you can. By lunchtime it is a bottleneck of people photographing each other.

We know it is wrong to have favourites, but we love Mr Cenz’s work. He has been a seminal figure on the London scene since the eighties, his surreal layered faces are unmistakable, and he is prolific enough that you would struggle to walk this route without seeing one. We met him one morning at the wall by Heneage Street, mid-piece, which is the sort of thing that happens if you come early on a weekday.

2. King John Court

Lucky dip

The building on the corner has carried pieces by Busk, Oliver Switch, Hicks, Dr Zadok, Ninth Seal, Hunto, Thoms, Captain Kris, Tizer and Best Ever, many of them part of a single series built around the theme of connectivity.

It is one of the densest concentrations on the walk and it changes less often than Brick Lane, so there is a fair chance some of what you see here is what we photographed. Give it ten minutes rather than two, and look up, which almost nobody does.

3. Holywell Lane

Reliable. Village Underground’s curated wall

Village Underground’s mural space, across from CitizenM, is one of the few genuinely reliable walls in Shoreditch. It is curated, it gets repainted rather than left to rot, and it has carried a long roster of serious names.

The two decommissioned tube carriages on the roof have been a Shoreditch landmark for years and were off limits the entire time. As of 3 July 2026 the Village Underground Rooftop is open to the public. Book it rather than photographing the carriages from the pavement, because it is the only stop on this walk where paying gets you something you cannot see for free.

4. Great Eastern Art Wall

Reliable. Curated by Global Street Art

At the Shoreditch High Street end of Great Eastern Street, on the side of The Stage, this is a permission wall curated by Global Street Art. It is never blank, it rotates on a schedule rather than at random, and it is the single most dependable stop on this walk.

If you only have twenty minutes in Shoreditch, spend them here. It is the one wall on this route we would guarantee, and the only one we would send someone to without checking first.

5. Braithwaite Street

Reliable

Duck under the railway beside the station. The hoardings and arches along Braithwaite Street and under the Overground line are consistently worked, and this is where you are most likely to find David Speed’s neon-lit portraits, which glow properly after dark and are one of the few pieces on this route genuinely better at night.

Just the other side of Hanbury Street there is a car park where murals crop up regularly, worth a two-minute detour. Our advice on this one is to come back after dark: Speed’s neon work is the only thing on the route that is genuinely better at night.

6. Ebor Street

Changed. Now hoardings

Ebor Street has a long, high wall that used to take some of the largest work in Shoreditch, including a Ben Eine piece and, when we last walked it, a Dotmasters and an oddly compelling advertisement for Louboutin shoes.

The buildings here came down in 2025 and what you are looking at now is site hoarding. Artists paint it and some of it is good, but this is the stop we would drop if you are running short. It is the weakest on the walk now and will stay that way until the site is built out.

7. Wheeler Street

Lucky dip

The arches under the station usually hold a few smaller pieces and you often have to walk right under the bridge to find them. It is the quietest stop on the route and the one most people skip.

Worth doing precisely because everyone else is upstairs at Boxpark. Two minutes, no more. There is a great deal more of the area in our Shoreditch guide.

8. Redchurch Street

Reliable

Back up towards Redchurch Street, which has become the smartest stretch in this part of Shoreditch and still carries work along its length and down the side streets running off it. Woskerski’s pieces turn up here regularly. Walk the side streets rather than the main drag, which is where the shops are and the work is not.

It is also the best coffee on the walk, which by stop eight you may want, and our Shoreditch coffee guide has where to stop.

9. Whitby Street

Reliable

Whitby Street is tiny and punches well above its weight. Jimmy C’s Lady of Whitby was the landmark piece here for years, done in his pointillist drip style, until it was defaced in 2025.

The wall space turns over quickly but rarely sits empty. Sixty seconds and you have seen it, and we would still not skip it: the ratio of good work to available wall is the best on the route.

10. Chance Street

Changed. Now hoardings

Chance Street used to hold some of the biggest murals on this walk. Like Ebor Street, the buildings were demolished in 2025 and the surface is now hoarding.

Still painted and still worth the two minutes. Pair it with Whitby Street and treat the two as a single stop rather than doubling back.

11. Sclater Street

Lucky dip

Between Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane, Sclater Street almost always has a few things going on, and it is the natural way to arrive at Brick Lane on foot.

Back that a** up and take the whole length of it rather than cutting through.

12. Brick Lane

Lucky dip, and the busiest

So much has been written about Brick Lane’s street art that it feels a shame to add to the word count, but here we are. If you have an hour rather than three, this is where to spend it: it feels like there is a new piece around every corner, and not even the bins have escaped.

Zabou is one of the names to look for, or was. This is also the bridge Banksy painted three monkeys onto in August 2024, and where TfL removed them four months later, which tells you everything about how permanent any of this is.

There is a great deal more of the street itself in our insider guide to Brick Lane, and the Sunday markets run in the yards behind it.

13. Grimsby Street

Reliable

Off the top end of Brick Lane and under the railway. Stik’s Screamers has been here for years and is one of the more durable pieces on this route, which for a Stik in east London is saying something.

The arches around it are worked regularly. The Stik is the one piece on this route we would cross the road for, and it is the reason to come off Brick Lane at all.

14. Pedley Street

Lucky dip

Escape the crush of Brick Lane to much quieter Pedley Street. Brace yourself for a barrage of audacious walls: the names and the pieces change but the overall effect does not.

It is amazing how one small spot consistently hosts such diverse work. Of all the lucky-dip stops this is our pick, and the one we have never come away from empty-handed.

15. Allen Gardens

Lucky dip

London is full of green space and plenty of it sees a bit of graffiti, but Allen Gardens is different. This small park at the end of Pedley Street is one of the most dynamic spots on the whole route.

We counted no fewer than ten new pieces going up on a single visit. Come back a month later and it will be ten different ones. Arnold Circus, five minutes north, is worth folding in: we have written up its history separately.

16. Seven Stars Yard

Reliable

Back on Brick Lane, the car park behind the Seven Stars has established itself as one of the most talked-about walls in London, and the line-up is always changing. It has carried work by the best international names on the circuit.

It is not always as epic as it has been, and that is the nature of it. Look, judge, and move on if the run is weak. This is the most variable wall on the list, capable of the best thing you see all day or of very little.

17. Heneage Street

Reliable

Fanakapan’s chrome balloon work has held this wall for a long time and is one of the most photographed 3D pieces in east London. It is also the wall where we met Mr Cenz one morning, mid-piece.

5th Base Gallery closed in 2019. What is here now is better: the Gilbert and George Centre at 5a, free, Thursday to Sunday, in a converted brewery building. Do it while you are here: twenty minutes, no ticket, and the only indoor stop on the walk. It is one of the more surprising art galleries in London.

18. Hanbury Street

Reliable, and the finish

The last stop and the best. ROA’s crane has been on the side of the building here since 2010, seven storeys of it, and has outlasted every other piece on this walk by more than a decade. Round the corner, Martin Ron’s upside-down Coldstream Guard has been up since 2013.

There is newer work along the street too, including an unsigned piece featuring two people who are clearly very into mushrooms, which replaced the previous incumbent in 2024. We will plead ignorance as to who they are. If you know, tell us.

From here it is ten minutes down to Liverpool Street through Fournier Street and Fashion Street, where we once came round a corner and accidentally gatecrashed one of Shoreditch Street Art Tours’ weekend outings. The guide was pointing at a Mr Cenz and saying that even people who do not get street art can see the skill in it. Which is about right.

The pieces that have actually lasted

Almost nothing here is permanent, but a handful of works have survived long enough to plan a walk around. ROA’s crane on Hanbury Street, up since 2010. Martin Ron’s upside-down guardsman, 2013. Stik’s Screamers on Grimsby Street. Fanakapan’s chrome balloons on Heneage Street. Those four you can reasonably expect to find.

Everything else is a bonus, and the walls that reliably carry something are the ones worth building a route around: Village Underground on Holywell Lane, the Great Eastern Art Wall at The Stage, Seven Stars Yard, and the railway arches at Braithwaite Street. All four are curated or semi-curated, which is why they are never bare.

Taking a guided tour instead

A guide gets you the background, the artist names and the pieces you would walk straight past, and Shoreditch Street Art Tours are the established operator. It is the sensible option if you want the history rather than just the photographs, and their guides genuinely know who painted what and when.

Otherwise the walk above is free, which is rather the point. If you want more of the city’s walls, we have a guide to street art across London, a separate one to Leake Street tunnel, the legal graffiti tunnel under Waterloo where anyone can paint, and a piece on the Battle of Cable Street mural a mile east of here, which is what political wall painting looked like in 1936.

One thing about the Truman Brewery

The £500m redevelopment of the Old Truman Brewery was approved by the Secretary of State in July 2026 after five years of objections, and the scheme includes a new building at Ely’s Yard on Dray Walk. We have not been able to establish from the published documents what happens to the yard as open space, or to the walls around it that currently carry work. Treat that corner as subject to change and check before you make a special trip for it.

The London x London Take: do this on a weekday morning, start at Old Street, and go in expecting to find things we have not photographed rather than the things we have. The four walls worth building the route around are Village Underground, the Great Eastern Art Wall, Seven Stars Yard and Hanbury Street, and if you only have an hour, do Brick Lane and Hanbury Street and accept you have seen the greatest hits. The rest of it rewards the sort of aimless wandering that this part of east London was made for, which is the only way anyone ever finds anything good here anyway.