Everyone treats Victoria as somewhere you pass through on the way to a train, but slow down and there’s a proper afternoon’s worth of sightseeing hiding among the office blocks.
We’ll admit it: Victoria spent years as our least favourite word in the London vocabulary, mostly because it meant standing on a rammed concourse trying to find the right platform. Charles Dickens wasn’t a fan either. Before the current street layout went in, he nicknamed this patch “The Devil’s Acre” for the criminal activity that clustered round Westminster Abbey.
Two hundred years on, it’s a much better-behaved neighbour, wedged between Westminster, Belgravia and Pimlico. There’s a working cathedral with a viewing tower most visitors never find, a scaled-down Big Ben with a genuinely odd back story, and enough good afternoon tea and cake within ten minutes’ walk to ruin your appetite for the rest of the day.
Here’s what we’d actually stop for.
The best things to do in Victoria
Find the secret tower at Westminster Cathedral
Not to be confused with its more famous Abbey neighbour, Westminster Cathedral sits a few paces from the station and gets walked past by most people rushing for their train. Don’t be one of them. Step inside and the high painted ceilings, half-finished mosaics and striped brick-and-stone exterior are worth the detour on their own, the mosaic work has been going on, on and off, since the cathedral was completed in 1903, and plenty of the upper walls are still bare brick waiting their turn.
Worth knowing: there’s also a 64-metre bell tower with a viewing gallery that gives one of the better panoramas in central London, lift included, so you don’t even have to climb for it. It doesn’t always keep the same hours as the cathedral itself, so check ahead before you make the trip up.
Spot Little Ben on the corner
At the junction of Victoria Street and Vauxhall Bridge Road stands Little Ben, a miniature replica of the real thing cast in 1892. It has had a properly chequered life for a cast-iron clock: taken down for restoration in 1964, re-erected in 1981, removed again in 2012 when the surrounding roads were dug up, and reinstalled in 2016 once the dust settled.
It’s a small, easy-to-miss landmark, but a fitting one for an area that trades on grander versions of the same architecture just up the road.
Watch the Changing of the Guard for free
Buckingham Palace is roughly an eight-minute walk from Victoria station, and while tickets for the State Rooms and the rest of the palace tours can get pricey, watching the Changing of the Guard costs nothing. Several times a week the Old Guard hands over to the New Guard in a ceremony with a full military band, and it remains one of the few genuinely free spectacles in this part of London.
Turn up early if you want an unobstructed view of the railings, the crowds build fast once the band’s audible.
Catch a show at the Victoria Palace Theatre
Built in 1910 by Alfred Butt, the Victoria Palace Theatre on Victoria Street has hosted variety shows, revues, musicals and plays for well over a century. Delfont Mackintosh Theatres bought and restored the building in 2014, bringing its interiors back in line with its Edwardian roots, and it has since become one of the West End’s most in-demand addresses for a big musical night out, currently home to Hamilton.
Book ahead if you’ve got a particular show in mind. This isn’t a theatre where you turn up on spec and expect good seats.
Shop the day away at Cardinal Place
Across the road from Westminster Cathedral, Cardinal Place is a cluster of three buildings covering around a million square feet, combining a shopping centre, offices and a good run of restaurants. With shops spread across eleven floors, it’s a reliable spot for anyone after a spot of retail therapy between sightseeing stops, and one of the easier places in the area to find a decent lunch without much planning.
Take afternoon tea at The Goring
Few things are more English than afternoon tea, and The Goring has been serving an award-winning version for over a century, one we’ve rated among London’s best afternoon teas full stop. Expect homemade jam, well-made teas, seasonal fruit and proper pastries, served daily except Saturday in the hotel’s Veranda.
A glass of champagne on the side is entirely in keeping with the surroundings, and this is a hotel that’s hosted royalty, so dress like you mean it.
Eat and drink all day at Artist Residence
A short walk from Victoria on the Pimlico side, Artist Residence is open all day for food and drink, from 8am through to just before 10pm. The restaurant inside the hotel goes by Cambridge Street, and it’s the kind of genuine neighbourhood hangout we wish more hotels bothered with, a café, restaurant and cocktail cellar rolled into one, as we found when we covered it properly in our Pimlico area guide.
By day it’s stacked pancakes and coffee on the terrace, by night the basement cocktail cellar takes over, with drinks themed around famous artworks. It suits everything from a quick coffee to a leisurely dinner, with that small terrace coming into its own on warmer days.
Graze your way round Market Halls
The Victoria branch of Market Halls packs nine kitchens, two bars and a rooftop terrace under one roof, making it an easy answer to indecision when the group can’t agree on what to eat. It’s one of the more relaxed bookable-free options we mention in our Victoria restaurants guide, useful to know given how many of the area’s other big names need a reservation weeks out.
Beyond the food stalls, it also runs a regular calendar of events, from live music nights to family-friendly weekend sessions, so it’s worth checking what’s on before you go if you want more than just dinner.
Photograph the cakes at Peggy Porschen
Peggy Porschen’s Belgravia parlour, all pastel paintwork and instantly recognisable from a thousand photographs, is one of the most photographed spots in London, and it’s a proper bakery too, not just a backdrop, serving pastries and afternoon tea alongside its famous cakes.
The counter runs to marshmallows, macarons, cupcakes, gingerbread and celebration cakes, and there are aprons and baking kits if you want to take the experience home with you.
