Free things to do in London

Q: How are the places chosen?

How the Guide picks places is set out at https://guide.vanalondon.com/how-vana-chooses.

27 free things to do in London, each one on the Guide on merit.

Alfies Antique Market
Antiques market · Marylebone
London's biggest indoor antiques and vintage-design market. Four rambling floors of dealers in mid-century furniture, lighting, jewellery and old fashion. Go to hunt, stay for the rooftop café. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Head up to the rooftop café, the one place you might find a bargain.
Backstory
Bookshop · Balham
A South London bookshop with a bar, and an easy place to walk into on your own.
A weekly author evening, then the bar. The bar is the point.
Barbican Conservatory
Conservatory garden · City
London's second-biggest glasshouse, 1,500 species of jungle tucked onto level 3 of the Barbican. The real draw is the collision of brutalist concrete and tropical planting. Free, open only Friday evenings and weekends, and popular with photographers, so time it and expect company.
Go for the concrete-meets-jungle architecture as much as the plants. Arrive at opening to get ahead of the selfie crowd.
Burgh House & Hampstead Museum
Historic house & museum · Hampstead
A Grade I Queen Anne house tucked in the Hampstead lanes, free to wander, with a small local-history museum, recitals, and a garden cafe that locals guard.
Opening days are odd, Wednesday to Friday plus Sunday, and the Buttery garden terrace is the local secret.
Camden Art Centre
Contemporary art centre · Finchley Road
Free contemporary art in a calm NW3 setting, with a café, a garden and a good bookshop.
Thursdays open late, so an after-work visit works; the garden and cafe are worth the trip even without a show.
Camden Passage
Antiques market · Islington
A cobbled Islington passage of antique dealers, vintage stalls and independent cafés and wine bars, with a proper flea market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The quiet, un-touristy answer to the big-name markets. Not to be confused with Camden Market.
Come Wednesday or Saturday for the stalls, then linger in the cafés along the lane.
Chiswick House & Gardens
Palladian villa & gardens · Chiswick
The Palladian villa and Kent landscape that is the birthplace of the English Landscape Movement, plus the country's oldest camellia collection each spring.
The gardens and cafe are free and open daily; check ahead for the house's limited opening times.
Crossbones Garden
Memorial garden · Southwark
A medieval burial ground for London's outcast dead, the Winchester Geese, reborn as a volunteer-run memorial garden. Tiny, ribbon-tied and moving. Open a few lunchtime hours midweek.
Come on the 23rd of the month for the gate vigil, or tie a ribbon to the memorial shrine on Redcross Way.
Goldsmiths CCA
Gallery · New Cross
A former Victorian bathhouse in New Cross turned free contemporary art space that programmes whatever it wants. Difficult, in the good way.
Admission is free and it is a short walk from New Cross, so it pairs easily with a Deptford afternoon.
Grays Antiques
Antiques market · Mayfair
The Mayfair answer to Alfies. A warren of dealers in fine jewellery, silver, watches and curios, with a lost river running under the basement. Come to browse and haggle, not always to buy. Closed weekends.
Find the channel of water running through the basement, complete with goldfish and a little bridge. The market says it is the buried River Tyburn; historians are unconvinced, which makes it a better story either way. Weekdays only, so make it a lunch break.
Hampstead Heath Bathing Ponds
Bathing ponds · Hampstead
Spring-fed swimming on the Heath: the Mixed Pond by Parliament Hill is the way in, lifeguarded, green, and colder than you expect even in August. A London ritual with fiercely loyal regulars.
Summer sessions mix bookable and drop-in slots, so check the booking system in peak months; off-season is drop-in only.
Hill Garden and Pergola
Garden · Hampstead
A 300-metre Edwardian pergola on the western edge of Hampstead Heath, draped in wisteria and rambling roses, half-ruined and overgrown in the best way. Free, and best in April.
It is free and quietest early in the morning; the raised walkway and wisteria are at their best in late spring.
Isabella Plantation
Woodland garden · Richmond
A 40-acre woodland garden hidden in the middle of Richmond Park, streams and ponds banked with evergreen azaleas. Peak colour late April into May.
Time a visit for late April or early May for the azaleas, and follow one of the colour-coded trails.
Japan House London
Museum & gallery · Kensington
Free Japanese design exhibitions on Kensington High Street, a tea-and-confectionery counter on the ground floor and a robatayaki above. Quiet, and more rewarding the more Japan already interests you.
The gallery and shop are free to enter, so it works as a drop-in even without a restaurant booking.
Kyoto Garden
Garden · Kensington
A koi pond, a waterfall and Japanese maples folded into a corner of Holland Park. Lovely, though it's firmly on the tourist and content-creator trail now, so by mid-afternoon it's a scrum. Get there early and it's a different place.
Come at opening, ideally on a weekday, for the serenity it is known for. By lunchtime the calm is long gone.
Libreria
Bookshop · Shoreditch
A deliberately disorienting bookshop: phone-free, with the genre sections done away with so you wander.
An evening workshop or themed night, smaller than a headline talk.
London Glassblowing
Glass studio · Bermondsey
Peter Layton's Bermondsey Street studio-gallery, free to walk in and watch artists shape molten glass behind the showroom. One of Europe's foremost hot-glass studios since 1976.
Visit Tuesday to Sunday to watch the makers at work in the hot shop behind the gallery.
Museum of the Home
Museum · Hoxton
The old Geffrye almshouses in Hoxton, free: a walk through middle-class front rooms from 1600 to a 1998 Shoreditch flat, plus period gardens out back. A quiet, lovely hour.
The period gardens are part of the free site, so time a visit for dry weather to see them.
Myddelton House Gardens
Historic garden · Enfield
The plantsman E. A. Bowles' own Enfield garden: glasshouses, a rock garden, national plant collections and a pair of 300-year-old lead ostriches. Free, tranquil, properly off the beaten track.
Visit in early spring for the crocus and snowdrop displays Bowles was famous for, and pair it with Forty Hall.
Mystery Cinema Screening
Mystery film night · Canary Wharf
A free weekly mystery film night aboard a floating arts centre, and it is legit.
Book direct via Theatreship and expect a low-key indie boat venue, not a plush cinema.
South London Gallery
Gallery · Camberwell
Free, serious contemporary art in Camberwell, easy to fold into a day of eating round here.
Walk through to the back garden and the Fire Station building across the road, which many visitors miss.
St Bride's Church
Wren church & crypt museum · Fleet Street
The journalists' church with a spire that allegedly invented the wedding cake. The free crypt museum is the real surprise.
Go down to the crypt museum, which is free and far quieter than the nave above.
The Wallace Collection
Museum & gallery · Marylebone
A private mansion of Old Masters, Sèvres porcelain and one of the world's great armour collections, free, just off Marylebone High Street. The glass-roofed courtyard is the calm.
The glass-roofed central courtyard restaurant is a calm lunch spot most visitors walk straight past.
V&A East Storehouse
Museum store · Hackney Wick
The museum turned inside out, where the back rooms are the whole point and you can ask to hold the collection.
Browse the catalogue first and book the free Order an Object slot; that is the part most people miss.
White Cube Bermondsey
Gallery · Bermondsey
Europe's largest commercial gallery, hidden behind a Bermondsey Street shopfront. Vast white halls, blue-chip names, and a double-height room built for art that needs the ceiling. Museum-quality shows, free, and impressive on a Saturday.
It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so plan a midweek-to-weekend visit.
Whitechapel Gallery
Gallery · Whitechapel
East London's pioneering contemporary-art space since 1901, free, where Londoners first saw Picasso and Pollock. Thursday Lates run to 9 with drinks at the bar.
It is free to enter, so it works well as a quick drop-in alongside nearby Brick Lane.
William Morris Gallery
Gallery · Walthamstow
Morris's boyhood home in Walthamstow, free, set in Lloyd Park: textiles, wallpaper and the whole arts-and-crafts story, with a good tearoom. A former Museum of the Year.
It is closed on Mondays, and the surrounding Lloyd Park is worth pairing with the visit.