London Heritage Trails

The British Museum's world collection and the Gothic railway hotel of St Pancras, a national library holding 200 million items, the Victorian terminus famous for a platform that doesn't exist, and a 1974 crafts stall that grew into sixteen acres of market stalls — five stops across Bloomsbury and Camden Town. 5 stops.

Wren's great cathedral dome and the column marking the Great Fire, the Roman-founded civic hall that survived two fires of its own, a 14th-century market turned Victorian ironwork gallery, and a museum where you can hold real gold — five stops tracing the City's power, trade and disasters across two thousand years. 5 stops.

The hilltop observatory that fixed time itself and the tea clipper that raced it home, Wren's grand naval college and the classical Queen's House at its heart, and a museum holding two million objects of Britain's story at sea — five stops tracing Maritime Greenwich from the meridian line down to the river. 5 stops.

Two of the three great 'Albertopolis' museums built from the 1851 Great Exhibition's profits, a concert hall built as Prince Albert's own memorial, and a royal palace that housed two future monarchs — five stops across South Kensington's museum quarter and Kensington Gardens. 5 stops.

Shakespeare's rebuilt playhouse and the medieval cathedral beside it, a nine-century-old market still trading beneath the railway arches, a dead power station reborn as Britain's most-visited art gallery, and the ship that sailed round the world and came home laden with Spanish treasure — five stops across Bankside and Borough. 5 stops.

A Norman fortress built to overawe a conquered city, the Victorian bascule bridge built four centuries later to serve it, a WWII cruiser moored where she once sailed to war, the oldest church in the City standing beside the scaffold ground, and Thomas Telford's only London dock project — five stops spanning nine centuries of royal power, war and trade on the Thames. 5 stops.

Big Ben's tower, the Abbey where monarchs are crowned, the Houses of Parliament, the Prime Minister's own front door, and the great Catholic cathedral just down the road — five landmarks tracing the heart of British government and faith in one Westminster walk. 5 stops.

The monarch's working palace and the Tudor palace still used for royal ceremony beside it, a Tudor deer park with pelicans descended from a tsar's gift, the Regency house that's been home to three future monarchs, and the parade ground where Henry VIII once jousted and soldiers still march for the King each June — five stops across royal Westminster. 5 stops.