In this guide
At a glance
- Vibe
- Open, riverside and the most reliably pleasant walk in London
- Time needed
- Half a day for the full walk
- Best day
- Any day; Borough Market is at its fullest Wednesday to Saturday
- Travel zone
- 1
- Walkability
- 5/5
- Typical spend
- ££
Best for
Nearest stations
- WaterlooJubileeNorthernBakerlooNational Rail
- SouthwarkJubilee
- London BridgeJubileeNorthernNational Rail
The South Bank is a continuous riverside walk from Westminster Bridge east to Tower Bridge, and it is the single best introduction to London on foot. It is flat, entirely pedestrianised, step-free, and lined with more free things to do than any comparable stretch in the city.
It is also the answer to bad weather: Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre, the BFI and Borough Market’s covered halls are all on the route and all free to walk into.
The South Bank has its own share of the commemorative plaques marking where notable people lived or worked - see them on our interactive map.
Why visit — and who should skip it
Come here if you have half a day and want to see a lot of London without planning anything. The walk connects Westminster, the Thames, three major free galleries, a great food market and Tower Bridge in one flat, signposted line.
Skip it if you specifically want quiet. This is one of the busiest pedestrian routes in Britain and the section between the London Eye and the Southbank Centre is crowded from late morning until evening every day of the year.
Top sights and activities
- Tate Modern — A converted power station holding the national collection of international modern art. Free, and open until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays as well as 10am–6pm the rest of the week. The tenth-floor viewing level in the Blavatnik Building is also free and gives you the river and St Paul’s from height without a ticket.
- Borough Market — A wholesale market since at least the 12th century, now the best food market in the city. Closed Mondays. Tuesday to Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday 9am–5pm, Sunday 10am–4pm.
- The Southbank Centre and BFI — Brutalist arts complex with free foyer spaces, the secondhand book market under Waterloo Bridge, and the BFI’s film programme.
- Shakespeare’s Globe — A faithful reconstruction of the 1599 open-air theatre, 230 metres from the original site. Standing in the yard is £10, the cheapest way in — and a batch of £5 Rush standing tickets is released every Friday at 11am for the following week, including for shows that are otherwise sold out. The indoor, candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse runs through the winter.
- The London Eye — 30 minutes, 135 metres, and the most-booked paid attraction in the country. Book a timed slot online; walk-up prices are considerably higher.
- Millennium Bridge — The pedestrian bridge from Tate Modern to St Paul’s, and the best five-minute crossing in London.
- Leake Street Arches — A road tunnel under Waterloo station given over to legal graffiti, repainted constantly by anyone who turns up with a can. Free, open, and the only sanctioned wall of its kind in central London.
- HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge — At the eastern end. HMS Belfast is nine decks and around three hours; adult tickets start at £23.45, but anyone on Universal Credit or Pension Credit pays £3, for up to five people in the household, booked online. Walking across Tower Bridge is free — you only pay for the high-level walkways, the glass floor and the Victorian engine rooms.
- Hay’s Galleria — The old Hay’s Wharf, where Britain’s tea came ashore, roofed over in 1987 with a glass barrel vault modelled on Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Free, covered, and holding a sixty-foot kinetic sculpture called The Navigators. Directly behind HMS Belfast.
The Navigators in Hay’s Galleria. It moves and squirts water, on the site of the wharf where most of Britain’s tea came ashore.
The Eye behind County Hall. It went up in 1999 as a temporary structure with a five-year permit. Photo: barry.marsh1944, Public Domain Mark.
The National Theatre - one of London’s major off-West End houses. Denys Lasdun’s 1976 building — the foyers are open to anyone, ticket or not, and there is a bar on every level.
Key streets and micro-districts
County Hall: three paid attractions in one building
The Edwardian block beside the Eye holds SEA LIFE London, the London Dungeon and Shrek’s Adventure, all Merlin-run and all indoors — which makes this the obvious wet-weather corner of the South Bank.
Buying them one at a time is the expensive way. Merlin’s Magical London covers all three plus the London Eye and Madame Tussauds in Marylebone, from £69 against £132 separately, valid 90 days. Two attractions are cheaper booked direct; from the third it pays.
Queen’s Walk (London Eye to Southbank Centre)
The busiest pedestrian stretch in Britain, and the one everybody pictures when they say South Bank: street performers, the Undercroft skate space, the second-hand book market under Waterloo Bridge, and a run of concrete arts buildings that people either love or walk straight past.
The most useful thing here is free and indoors. The Royal Festival Hall foyers are open to anyone — seats, heating, toilets, a piano, a view over the river — and the Southbank Centre lets you bring your own food and soft drinks in, which in an area where every riverside bench comes with a £6 coffee attached is worth knowing. Only alcohol has to be bought on site, and the whole complex is cash-free. Upstairs, the Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden is free too: over 200 wild native plants and a bar, open Tuesday from 4pm and Wednesday to Sunday from midday, closed Mondays.
The book market under Waterloo Bridge runs daily, roughly 10am to 7pm, and has done since 1983 — eight stalls of second-hand fiction, children’s books, maps and prints. Past it, the National Theatre foyers are open 10am to 11pm Monday to Saturday with no ticket needed, and there is a bar on every level.
The Undercroft. Skated continuously since the early 1970s and formally protected in 2014 after a campaign to build shops in it.
The Eye from underneath. It is a cantilevered wheel supported from one side only, which is why the whole structure leans out over the river.
Bankside
Quieter than the western end and the most attractive part of the walk — Tate Modern, the Globe, the Millennium Bridge and a riverside path with the City on the far bank.
Tate Modern is the anchor and it costs nothing. Sunday to Thursday 10am–6pm, and until 9pm on Friday and Saturday, which is the best time to go: the crowds thin, the Turbine Hall empties out, and it is the rare free thing in London that is open at night. The tenth-floor viewing level in the Blavatnik Building behind it is also free, reached by lift — worth knowing that it only opens on three sides now, after the flats opposite won a privacy case against the gallery.
Ninety seconds west of Tate’s door, Bankside Gallery is free, open daily during exhibitions, and gets about 55,000 visitors a year against Tate’s millions. It is the home of the Royal Watercolour Society and almost nobody walking between the two notices it.
Tate Modern, in the shell of Bankside Power Station. Free, and the tenth-floor viewing level in the Blavatnik Building behind it is free too.
Shakespeare’s Globe. The thatch is the only one in London — every other roof of its kind was banned after the Great Fire.
The Anchor Bankside. Samuel Pepys watched the Great Fire from somewhere near here; the present building is early 1800s.
Borough and Southwark
Inland from the river, and the part of this area most worth your time — Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral and the Victorian streets around Stoney Street.
Borough Market is closed on Mondays, which is the single most common wasted journey here. Tuesday to Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday 9am–5pm, Sunday 10am–4pm, and seven days a week through December. Saturday is heaving; a Tuesday or Wednesday morning is the same market with room to move. Borough Market Kitchen is the hot street food section.
Southwark Cathedral is free and open 9am–6pm Monday to Saturday, 8.30am–5pm Sunday — a thousand years of building beside a market, with a churchyard, a herb garden and a resident cat. There is an hourly pause for prayer on the half hour, about two minutes, when visitors are asked to stand still.
Around them, three small paid museums that people miss: the Old Operating Theatre, a Georgian surgical theatre up a spiral staircase in a church tower (Thursday to Sunday only); the Clink Prison Museum on the site of the Bishop of Winchester’s gaol; and the Golden Hinde, currently under restoration, so parts may be shut. The ruins of Winchester Palace on Clink Street are free, roofless and visible from the pavement at any hour, rose window and all.
Borough Market. Busiest on Saturday by a wide margin — a Tuesday or Wednesday morning is the same market with room to move.
More London and Tower Bridge
The eastern end, and the stretch that has changed most.
The building everyone still calls City Hall is not City Hall any more. The Mayor and the Assembly moved out to the Royal Docks in December 2021, and Foster’s leaning glass egg — now 110 The Queen’s Walk — is a building site: main construction runs from February 2026 to summer 2028, after which it becomes offices, shops, restaurants and a food hall. There is nothing to see there for the moment, and The Scoop, the free sunken amphitheatre beside it that used to run open-air summer screenings, is inside the same scheme, so do not plan around it.
HMS Belfast is the reason to come to this stretch. Nine decks, open 10am–6pm daily, and IWM suggests at least three hours. Adult tickets start at £23.45 — but anyone on Universal Credit, Pension Credit or several other benefits pays £3, covering up to five people in the household, booked online in advance. Almost no guide mentions it.
Then Tower Bridge, which is free to walk across; the ticket buys the high-level walkways with the glass floor over the traffic and the Victorian engine rooms. The bridge lifts around 800 times a year and the schedule is published weeks ahead on its own site — watching it open from the riverside costs nothing and is better than the walkway.
A minute past the southern end of the bridge, on Horselydown Lane, Tower Bridge Collective opened in October 2025: thirteen independent kitchens over two floors, open from 8am daily, and by a distance the cheapest good eating anywhere near Tower Bridge. It is the obvious answer to the problem this end of the river has always had, which is that everything with a view charges for it.
HMS Belfast, permanently moored off Tooley Street since 1971. The view across her guns to the City is the best free thing on this stretch.
Lower Marsh and Leake Street
Behind Waterloo station, five minutes off the tourist route and far better value for it.
Lower Marsh is a genuine local street of independent cafés, record shops and a weekday market, roughly 11am to 3pm Monday to Friday — worth checking before a weekend trip, because the market’s own site lists Saturday and Sunday as closed even though plenty of other listings still advertise a Saturday flea market.
Leake Street runs under the station platforms alongside it: London’s longest legal graffiti wall, free, open, and repainted constantly by anyone who turns up with a can. It has been legal since Banksy’s Cans Festival in 2008. Eight of the railway arches are now independent venues — a Polish restaurant, a Philadelphia dive bar, a board-game café — so the tunnel is a night out as well as a walk-through.
Leake Street Arches. The whole tunnel is repainted every few days.
Where to eat and drink
| Spot | Style | Price | Why go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borough Market | Food market | £ | Grab-and-go from dozens of traders; go before midday on Saturdays |
| Southbank Centre Food Market | Street food | £ | Behind the Royal Festival Hall, Friday to Sunday |
| Lower Marsh | Independent cafes | £ | Behind Waterloo, and the best value near the river |
| The Anchor Bankside | Historic riverside pub | ££ | Terrace over the Thames; touristy but the view is real |
| OXO Tower Brasserie | Modern British | £££ | Eighth-floor river views; the public viewing balcony is free |
| Padella | Handmade pasta | £ | Beside Borough Market; queue-only, and worth it |
| Tower Bridge Collective | Food hall | £ | Thirteen kitchens off Shad Thames, from 8am daily |
The Southbank Centre Food Market, behind the Royal Festival Hall. Friday to Sunday, and the cheapest hot food on this stretch of river.
See all 38 places to eat and drink in the South Bank
Getting there
By Tube and rail. Waterloo (Jubilee, Northern, Bakerloo, National Rail) serves the western end. Southwark (Jubilee) is closest to Tate Modern. London Bridge (Jubilee, Northern, National Rail) serves Borough Market and the eastern end.
Best exit. From Waterloo, follow signs for the South Bank exit rather than the main concourse — it puts you out on the riverside in two minutes. From London Bridge, use the Borough Market exit.
On foot. Ten minutes from Westminster across the bridge, five from St Paul’s over the Millennium Bridge, fifteen from Covent Garden over Waterloo Bridge.
By river. Piers at the London Eye, Bankside and London Bridge City. See the river boats guide.
How long to spend, and when to go
| If you have | Do this |
|---|---|
| One hour | London Eye to Tate Modern along the river |
| Half a day | The full walk to Tower Bridge, with Tate Modern and Borough Market |
| A full day | Add the Globe, HMS Belfast and the Tower Bridge walkway |
Best time: Late afternoon into sunset. The walk faces north across the river, so the light on St Paul’s and the City in the evening is the best of the day.
For Borough Market: Before midday, Tuesday to Friday. Saturday is the fullest market and the hardest to move through.
Map of the South Bank
Open the map63 places: 35 places to eat · 21 things to do · 3 hidden spots · 4 places to stay
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Eat & drinkThings to doHidden LondonStay
What's on in the South Bank
Limited runs and the annual fixtures. Anything already finished is removed automatically.Links marked ad are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects what goes on this list.
London Design Festival
Not open yetEleven design districts run trails, installations and open studios, with the V&A and Design Museum programming their own strands rather than hosting incidentally. It rewards picking one neighbourhood over trying to see all of it.
Runs the same week as Open House London, so architecture and design combine into one dense week. Talks and forums book up; the district trails are walk-in.
Totally Thames
Not open yetOver a hundred river events under one umbrella - foreshore walks, boat festivals, art installations - that absorbed the old Mayor's Thames Festival. A September visit can be built around it without realising it is one programme.
Most events free and unticketed. Highlights in 2026 include Chiswick Tidefest on 6 September and the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival on 12-13 September.
Anish Kapoor
Not open yetThe anchor show of the Southbank Centre's 75th anniversary, and Kapoor's large-scale work suits the Hayward's raw concrete unusually well.
The smaller Jen Liu show runs alongside in the same building to the same closing date.
BFI London Film Festival
Not open yetUnlike Cannes or Venice, anyone can buy a ticket to the premieres - no accreditation, just booking speed. The 2026 edition is the 70th.
Public booking opens in September and the galas go fast; ordinary screenings of the same films are far easier to get.
London New Year's Eve Fireworks
Not open yetThe most important fact is operational: since 2014 this has NOT been a free walk-up event. The riverside is gated and ticketed, tickets sell out months ahead, and a guide that skips this sends readers to be turned away at midnight.
Tickets released via london.gov.uk months in advance. Without one, the fireworks are visible poorly or not at all from outside the zones - Primrose Hill and other high ground are the unticketed alternatives.
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Not open yetFramed around Kahlo's image-making rather than straight biography - a different show from the Kahlo retrospectives most people have already seen.
Runs through the Christmas peak; book the quiet January weekdays.
Southbank Centre Winter Market
Not open yetThe free-entry alternative to ticketed Winter Wonderland - chalets, food and mulled wine along the river with the Eye behind, walkable as part of a South Bank evening rather than an outing in itself.
No entry fee; you pay at the stalls. Busiest weekend evenings.
Ana Mendieta
Not open yet16+Mendieta's body-and-land work rarely gets a full London survey. Some pieces deal with violence against women - not a casual outing, and worth knowing before booking.
Content warnings apply; check Tate's guidance.
Club NVRLND
Not open yet18+Peter Pan rewritten as a club night, with the cast performing around a dancefloor you are standing on rather than a stage you face.
Runs 14 November 2026 to 31 January 2027. Over-18.
Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography
Not open yetFree, and reaches back to photography's earliest art claims - an unusual historical register for Tate Modern, and no ticket alongside the paid shows.
Pairs with any ticketed show on the same visit.
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong
Not open yet18+One of the most significant living photographers in full retrospective - addiction, intimacy and the AIDS crisis, and genuinely not family viewing, which is worth knowing before booking.
Dates from the Southbank Centre's own announcement; price and formal age guidance unconfirmed.
Gathering Ground
Not open yetFree with a long run into March - the reliable wet-weather fallback at Tate Modern whatever else is on.
No booking pressure; walk in.
Tarek Atoui: Hyundai Commission
Not open yetThe Turbine Hall commission is always free and always at a scale nothing else in London matches - this year's is built around sound.
Walk in; the hall is the museum's front door.
Monet: Painting Time
Not open yetMonet blockbusters sell out months ahead and readers plan trips around them - flagged now even though it opens in February 2027.
Booking will open well before the February opening; free for Tate Members.
Doggett's Coat and Badge Race
Not open yetSingle scullers race four miles and seven furlongs from London Bridge to Chelsea for a scarlet coat and silver badge, as they have since 1715 - older than the Boat Race and the Derby. Watch free from any bridge on the route.
The 312th running starts 1.15pm on 2 September 2026. Organised by the Fishmongers' and Watermen's Companies, who have never needed to market it - which is why almost nobody watching knows what they are seeing.
Meltdown
Not open yetA single curator - Patti Smith, Grace Jones, Harry Styles in 2026 - books the whole festival, so the lineup is genuinely unpredictable rather than circuit-standard. The curator announcement itself is the news each spring.
Has skipped years before (2006, 2020-21), so confirm the current edition exists before planning around it.
EFG London Jazz Festival
Not open yetThe same ten days span £60 Barbican headliners and £10 pub sessions, and the free fringe strand is the part visitor guides always skip. Programming runs across the small rooms in our live music guide.
Programme publishes around September at efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk. The famous names sell out; the discovery gigs do not.
Things to do in the South Bank
Beyond eating and drinking. Free things are listed first.Links marked ad are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects what goes on this list.
Hay's Galleria
FreeHay's Wharf, where Britain's tea came ashore, roofed over in 1987 with a glass and steel barrel vault modelled on Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II - and holding David Kemp's sixty-foot kinetic sculpture The Navigators.
Free, covered and open to walk through, which makes it the best wet-weather stop on the riverside between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. The Navigators moves and squirts water on the hour.
Imperial War Museum
FreeOne of London's half-dozen biggest national museums and free, covering conflict from WWI to today - a Holocaust galleries floor that needs real time, and a full-size Spitfire hanging in the atrium.
The single biggest museum gap this sheet had - genuinely major, not a niche pick. Allow a full half-day, not an add-on.
South Bank Book Market
FreeEight stalls of second-hand books, maps and prints running under Waterloo Bridge for forty years, with traders who have been there since the 1980s.
Sheltered by the bridge, so it runs in rain. Open daily but the stalls that turn up vary - the antiquarian and print sellers are not there every day.
Southbank Centre
FreeEurope's largest arts centre, and the foyers, outdoor artworks and a good share of the exhibitions cost nothing at all to walk into.
The free programme is the point and it is genuinely substantial. The Royal Festival Hall foyer is open to anyone to sit and work in, with no purchase expected.
Southbank Centre Food Market
FreeThirty-odd stalls behind the Royal Festival Hall, steps from the National Theatre - Caribbean, Venezuelan, Ethiopian and Punjabi among them, and one of the few South Bank options that is not a chain.
Friday to Sunday plus bank holiday Mondays only - does not exist on a weekday. Many stalls are card-only.
Undercroft Skate Space
FreeSkated continuously since 1973 and defended from redevelopment by a campaign that won - the oldest surviving skate spot on earth, still in daily use.
Free to skate and free to watch, and watching is what most people do. Do not walk through the middle of it - stand at the edges.
BFI IMAX
The biggest screen in the country, in a glass drum marooned in the middle of a Waterloo roundabout - the room is emphatically the reason to go.
Meets the cinema rule on this tab: it is here because of the screen, not because it shows films. Book central rows well back; the front is too close.
BFI Southbank
Four screens of archive prints, restorations and seasons that no multiplex would touch, plus the free Mediatheque where you can watch the national archive on your own.
The Mediatheque is FREE and bookable by the hour, and almost nobody outside film circles knows it exists. Meets the cinema rule as an independent repertory house.
Draughts Waterloo
Over a thousand board games, a small cover charge to play as many as you like, and staff whose job is to teach you the rules.
On Leake Street, the graffiti tunnel under Waterloo - which is worth walking through on the way. Book a table at weekends.
Hayward Gallery
A 1968 Brutalist box with pyramid rooflights, running two or three large contemporary shows a year that tend to be the immersive, walk-into-them kind.
Ticketed and separate from the free Southbank Centre programme. The upper sculpture terraces reopened after restoration and are part of the ticket.
London Eye
One full rotation at 135 metres over the river, and still the clearest way to work out how London fits together on a first visit.
Book a timed slot online - walk-up costs more and the queue is the whole experience otherwise. Capsules are shared unless you pay for a private one.
Peaky Blinders: Underworld
16+A recreation of the Garrison with a hidden door behind it, opening into Garrison Lane, The Bookies, Chinatown and the Small Heath Fairground - free-roam rather than a guided route, with actors in among the set instead of performing at you.
Opened 21 August 2026 in the railway arches, which is the right building for a show set underground. BOOK ONLINE: GBP19.95 against GBP29.95 on the door is a 33% difference for the same hour, and the biggest price gap of any immersive show in London. An hour is genuinely an hour, so it works before dinner rather than as a night out.
SEA LIFE London Aquarium
A walk-through shark tunnel and a rockhopper penguin colony in the basement of County Hall, which is a strange and good place for an aquarium to be.
Timed entry and much cheaper booked online. Combined tickets with the London Eye next door are usually better value than two separate ones.
Shrek's Adventure! London
A guided walkthrough with live actors and a 4D bus ride, aimed squarely at primary-school children - the counterpart to the Dungeon in the same building, and the one that will not terrify them.
Best for roughly ages 5-10. Timed entry, and cheaper booked online. County Hall also holds the Aquarium and the London Dungeon, so a combined ticket is usually worth pricing up.
Thames Rockets
A sightseeing cruise for the first half and a full-throttle speedboat run past Canary Wharf for the second - the only Thames trip that is a ride rather than a tour.
Departs from the London Eye Pier. You will get wet and it is loud; waterproofs are provided. Not suitable for anyone with back or neck problems, and there are minimum height rules.
The London Dungeon
16+Actors, drops and a lot of shouting, working through the grimmer parts of London's history - the plague, the Great Fire, Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper.
AGE GUIDANCE MATTERS HERE. Merlin recommend it for 12+, and under-16s must be with an adult; it genuinely frightens younger children. Book online, which is materially cheaper than the door. In County Hall alongside the Aquarium and Shrek's Adventure.
The Old Operating Theatre Museum
The oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe, in the roof space of a church by London Bridge, reached up a 52-step spiral staircase - operating table, sawdust box and all.
The spiral staircase is the only way in and there is no lift, which makes it genuinely inaccessible. Weekend surgery demonstrations are the thing to time a visit around.
The Paddington Bear Experience
A walk-through Paddington adventure built for small children - the Browns' house, the marmalade, and enough to do that under-sixes stay interested.
At WATERLOO, not Paddington, which catches out almost everyone who books it. Timed tickets.
The View from The Shard
The highest public viewpoint in western Europe, on floors 68 to 72 of the Shard, with the top level open to the sky.
EXPENSIVE, AND THERE ARE FREE ALTERNATIVES. The Sky Garden and Tate Modern's viewing level both cost nothing and are already on this sheet - this is worth it for the height and the open-air deck, not because it is the only option. Book ahead; walk-up is dearer.
Book London Eyead
Hidden the South Bank
Free, self-guided and easy to walk past without knowing it's there.
Bridget Jones's Flat
Filming locationBridget Jones's Diary (2001) - Bridget's flat above the Globe Tavern
Bridget's flat exterior sits directly above the Globe Tavern on the edge of Borough Market - the interiors were shot at Elstree, but the building, the pub and the market below are all real and still there.
A private residential flat above a working pub - viewable from the street/market only.
Gabriel's Wharf
Filming locationLove Actually (2003) - Daniel and Sam on the South Bank
Where Liam Neeson's Daniel has the heart-to-heart with his stepson about being in love, with the river behind them. A small courtyard of independent shops and cafes that has survived the South Bank's redevelopment intact.
Free, open at all hours as a through route, with the shops keeping daytime hours. Five minutes from Waterloo, on the walk between the National Theatre and the OXO Tower.
Roupell Street
Filming locationNo Time To Die (2021) - Bond and Moneypenny call on Q at home
A cobbled terrace of early nineteenth-century workers' cottages a few minutes behind Waterloo, used as the street Q lives on. It is the most complete pre-Victorian street in the area and looks it.
A residential conservation area, free and open, best in daylight. Three minutes from Waterloo East, and the Kings Arms on the corner is a genuinely good pub.
Stoney Street
Filming locationHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - the Leaky Cauldron exterior
The third film moved the Leaky Cauldron here, to the brick railway arches on the edge of Borough Market - a completely different building from the Leadenhall Market version used in the first film. Both are canon and both are in London.
Free and open, a public street through the market. Borough Market's own trading hours make the difference between atmospheric and deserted; London Bridge station is two minutes away.
Tate Modern
Filming locationMatch Point (2005) - the gallery opening
The gallery where Chris runs into Nola again and the film turns. The Turbine Hall does a lot of work in British cinema as shorthand for the moneyed art world.
Free entry to the collection, daily 10am to 6pm, with Level 10's free viewing bar open to 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Southwark or Blackfriars, or across the Millennium Bridge from St Paul's.
The Ferryman's Seat
Hidden gemThe last surviving stone perch used by Thames boatmen waiting for customers
Before bridges crossed this stretch of the Thames, watermen ferried Londoners across for a fee - this stone seat, set into a wall near the Globe, is the last of the perches they waited on. Genuinely easy to walk straight past.
Set into a wall on a public street, visible any time, a couple of minutes from Shakespeare's Globe.
The Millennium Bridge
Filming locationHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) - Death Eaters destroy the bridge
Collapsed into the Thames in the opening minutes of the sixth film. In reality it is the pedestrian bridge from St Paul's to Tate Modern, and the walk across it gives the best straight-on view of the cathedral in London.
Free, open at all times, busiest at weekends. Two minutes from Tate Modern.
The Shard
Filming locationSpider-Man: Far From Home (2019) - Fury and Hill watch the drone attack
Where Nick Fury and Maria Hill watch London come apart from a great height. The building has appeared in more London-under-attack sequences than any other since it topped out in 2012.
The View from The Shard occupies floors 68 to 72, including an open-air deck; hours change by date so check the calendar. Aqua Shard on level 31 has no admission fee if you book a table. London Bridge station is underneath.
Winchester Palace Ruins
Hidden gemThe Great Hall wall and rose window of a medieval bishop's palace
One wall of the Bishop of Winchester's Great Hall, rose window still intact, standing on an ordinary pavement between the Golden Hinde and the Clink Prison Museum - surrounded now by Borough Market's restaurant crowds rather than the medieval palace it was once part of. Surfaced in research months ago and never actually written up until now.
Free, viewable from the street at any time. A small medieval-style garden sits inside the ruin, planted by the Bankside Open Spaces Trust.
Where to stay
Better value than the north bank, well connected, and lively into the evening.
- Waterloo and Lower Marsh — Mid-range hotels a few minutes from the river, with excellent transport.
- Bankside and Southwark — Quieter, walkable to Tate Modern and Borough Market.
- London Bridge — The eastern end, well connected for Gatwick via Thameslink and Southern.
Cheapest first. Prices are a typical starting rate per night, not a quote.Links marked ad are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects what goes on this list.
St Christopher's Village, London Bridge
£Accessible roomsThe UK's first capsule hostel, and the only London address where a capsule comes with a bar, a roof terrace and events most nights - Belushi's is downstairs and Borough Market is two minutes away.
THE ONE CAPSULE PROPERTY THAT IS ALSO A HOSTEL, which makes it the exception to everything else on the pods list: 24-hour reception, a bar, a roof terrace, lockers and organised events, none of which the dedicated capsule hotels offer. Only 26 of its beds are capsules, the rest being ordinary dorms and private rooms, so the capsule is a room type here rather than the whole building. A Private Double Capsule sleeps two and was the only capsule bookable on most sampled dates. Breakfast is GBP3 extra. Check-out 11am, an hour later than Zedwell, and check-in runs to 2am but there is NO after-hours check-in beyond that.
citizenM London Bankside
££HotelAccessible roomsOne room type, a wall-to-wall window, a tablet that runs the blinds and lights, and a lobby full of Eames and Panton that works as a living room.
Rooms are genuinely SMALL - the bed fills the width. That is the trade for the price and the location; people who have not seen the format are sometimes shocked.
Premier Inn London County Hall
££HotelAccessible roomsInside County Hall next to the London Eye, which is an absurd address for a budget chain - the same building as a five-star hotel, at a third of the price.
The best-located Premier Inn in London and priced accordingly - it is the most expensive in the estate. Book far ahead; walk-up rates are poor value.
Native Bankside
£££AparthotelAccessible roomsOn a lane behind Shakespeare's Globe, five minutes from Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge, with Borough Market a ten-minute walk east - the best-placed aparthotel on the South Bank.
Bear Gardens is a quiet cut-through rather than a road, so it is calmer than the Bankside address suggests. NOT PRICED YET - no rate has been sampled for this row.
The Hoxton, Southwark
£££BoutiqueBreakfast includedAccessible roomsThe Hoxton format applied to a Southwark new-build, with Seabird - a rooftop restaurant with the longest oyster list in London - on top.
Breakfast bag included in the rate, as at every Hoxton. Seabird on the roof is open to non-residents and needs booking.
Make a day of it
Combine the South Bank with
Walking times are from the centre of the South Bank. Each of these works as an afternoon once you have finished here.
Westminster
10 min walkAcross Westminster Bridge for Big Ben, the Abbey and Whitehall.
The City of London
5 min walkOver the Millennium Bridge from Tate Modern, straight to St Paul's.
Covent Garden
15 min walkNorth over Waterloo Bridge, which has the best view in London.
Shoreditch
30 min walkNorth-east past Tower Bridge for markets, street art and evening bars.
Suggested walking route (west to east)
- Start: Westminster station, cross Westminster Bridge to the London Eye.
- Southbank Centre: East along Queen’s Walk past the performers and the book market.
- Tate Modern: Continue to Bankside. Go up to the tenth-floor viewing level — free.
- Shakespeare’s Globe: Next door; look in even without a ticket.
- Borough Market: Inland at Southwark Cathedral for lunch.
- Finish: East past HMS Belfast to Tower Bridge.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Paying for a view before trying the free ones. Tate Modern’s tenth floor and the Sky Garden are both free. Book the Sky Garden weeks ahead.
- Going to Borough Market on a Monday. Only a limited market runs. Tuesday to Saturday for the full thing.
- Buying London Eye tickets on the day. Walk-up is significantly more expensive and the queue is long. Book a timed slot.
- Eating on Queen’s Walk itself. Walk five minutes inland to Lower Marsh or Borough for better food at half the price.
- Taking the Tube between South Bank stops. Waterloo to London Bridge is a pleasant 25-minute walk along the river and an awkward journey underground.
- Doing the walk at midday in summer. The western half is packed. Start early or go late.
Common questions
How long is the South Bank walk?
From the London Eye to Tower Bridge is about 3.5 km and takes roughly 45 minutes at a steady pace, or half a day with stops. It is entirely flat, fully paved and step-free the whole way, with the only bridges being optional crossings.
Is Tate Modern free?
Yes. The permanent collection is free, as at all Tate galleries, and so is the tenth-floor Blavatnik Building viewing level. Only the special exhibitions are ticketed. It is closed on a small number of days a year, so check before a special trip.
What days is Borough Market open?
The full market runs Tuesday to Saturday, with Wednesday to Saturday the busiest and best-stocked. Mondays are a limited market and Sundays are reduced. Arrive before midday on a Saturday if you want to move around it comfortably.
What is the best free view of London?
The tenth floor of Tate Modern's Blavatnik Building looks straight across to St Paul's and is completely free. The Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street is also free but requires booking a slot weeks ahead. Both beat paying for the Shard on a cloudy day.
Is the South Bank good in the rain?
Better than most of London. Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre, the BFI and Borough Market's covered halls are all on the route and all free to enter, so you can do most of the walk hopping between indoor spaces.
