48 hours in… London

Beacon of British history, scion of the arts, cultural magpie: London is inexhaustible. The city’s breadth leaves you wanting for nothing, but that makes it tricky to tackle in a weekend. Attempt a speedrun of every palace, gallery and museum on the circuit and you risk missing the bigger picture: London’s a walker’s city, and it’s when you’re wandering that it rewards you most.

With our city guide to London, you’ll hit a few classic hotspots and get off the well-worn track, covering several boroughs without winding up feeling like a jellied eel (hot tip on where to try those coming up). Here’s how to spend 48 hours in London…

FRIDAY: EVENING

Make a beeline for the Broadwick hotel in dead-central Soho (closest Tube station: Oxford Circus). Once a naughtier spot synonymous with red lights, Soho has long been London’s entertainer. For better or worse, it’s cleaned up most of its vices, but remains an anything-goes kind of place. At the Broadwick, designer Martin Brudnizki has injected English eccentricity, Jazz Age excess and disco decadence into the interiors — so it fits the area like a lacy glove.

Once you’re settled in, sink a glass of pinot or cloudy Breton cider at local boozer the French House. It’s jam-packed most evenings, so your best bet is to grab your drinks and decamp to the pavement as the locals do. For classic English cuisine, there’s Soho mainstay Quo Vadis, where the menu is as homegrown as it gets: skate wing, pheasant pie, jellied pork and eel terrine, and so on (don’t be daunted — it’s all excellent). The restaurant’s in the same building that a down-on-his-luck Karl Marx used to call home, where he mixed with fellow émigrés, dodged creditors (including his milkman) and survived a cholera outbreak.

Back at the Broadwick, the manifesto — or rather, menu — at rooftop bar Flute suits champagne (or cocktail, or beer…) socialists. Post up at the onyx-topped bar with a Cruella: a medley of Tanqueray 10, bitters, kumquat, turmeric and vermouth.

SATURDAY: MORNING

We’re normally advocates of a lie-in, but it pays to get down to breakfast early at the Broadwick. It’s served in Bar Jackie, the hotel’s flamboyant café, where you can tip your hat to Soho’s Gallic connections by ordering the French toast (indecently good) or the full-English (fit for a king).

First stop: Westminster Abbey. Yes, it’s a titan of London tourism but it’s the gold standard in English Gothic architecture. A private tour is the way to go, even if you’re not a first-timer. It will be busy, so be sure to pre-book an early slot with a Blue Badge guide, who’ll deftly unpick 1,000 years of art, history and hidden meaning; you’ll come away knowing more of its secrets than most Londoners.

From the Abbey, stroll up the Thames-flanking Embankment, taking a peek at Renaissance spectacle Somerset House, also home to the Courtauld Gallery, on the way to Sir John Soane’s Museum in Holborn. Left as it was when the eminent architect died in 1837, Soane’s house is a treasure trove of art and artefacts: paintings by Turner and Hogarth, Grecian urns, Roman columns, even a sarcophagus from the age of the Pharaohs. Think of it as the British Museum in miniature, giving you the option to swerve the Herculean institution up the road (it can swallow up a lot of time).

Next, take a turn around the courtyard of Lincoln’s Inn, one of London’s prestigious Inns of Court. Were it not for the disproportionate number of Porsches parked nearby, it could pass for an Oxford college. You can lunch like a barrister at J Sheekey in Covent Garden, where plates of salt-and-pepper squid, Cornish sole and platters of oysters flow by. Londoners have shucked and supped on the molluscs for centuries, although for much of history they were considered fit only for laymen, not lawmen.

SATURDAY: AFTERNOON

Head west past Piccadilly Circus and into blue-blooded Mayfair. Adjacent to Piccadilly is the charmingly old-school Burlington Arcade, a 200-year-old shopping gallery still under the protection of a private police force known as the Beadles, who enforce rules like ‘no opening of umbrellas’, ‘no merriment’, and perhaps the most British of them all, ‘no hurrying’. Inside, you’ll find Scottish cashmere at Begg x Co, vintage Omega watches at Somlo London and covetable luggage at Globe-Trotter. Beyond the arcade, explore the fashion flagships on Old and New Bond Street, but you’ll get a more local feel at Shepherd’s Market (the Chesterfield Arms is your swift-half-pint stop). In the way of art, there are the classics (the Royal Academy), the cult galleries (Gagosian, Sadie Coles HQ, Hauser & Wirth), and relative newcomers like Saatchi Yates on Cork Street.

Mind the gap: to maximise your time, skip over a neighbourhood or two and head straight to Notting Hill. Descend into Green Park station, change at Baker Street and emerge at Ladbroke Grove. Swing by Cable Co for coffee, then cut up to Portobello Road, where its legendary market will be in full swing. There’s a roaring trade in vintage threads and the market is known for throwing up the find of a lifetime — say, a Savile Row suit that slips on perfectly or a leather jacket that began life in a Tokyo atelier. The best-curated collections are found at brick-and-mortar outlets like Found and Vision and Karen Vintage; for vinyl, go digging in Rough Trade West and Honest Jon’s Records.

SATURDAY: EVENING

Notting Hill is at its winsome best at golden hour, when its pastel houses catch the glow just so. Beyond Portobello Road, you’ll find Lancaster Road, Elgin Crescent, St Luke’s Mews and Farm Place among the most photogenic streets.

After sundown, knock back a Negroni at the Princess Royal, a rejuvenated 1800s drinking hole with a beautifully restored horseshoe bar. For dinner, there’s Fadi Kattan’s excellent Akub on Uxbridge Street. This much-loved modern Palestinian restaurant lays bare the depth of Kattan’s native cuisine (inspired by his grandmother’s bold experiments with flavour). Must-try dishes include the short rib fatteh, arak-cured monkfish and the labneh balls rolled in sumac, turmeric, zaatar and Aleppo pepper.

SUNDAY: MORNING

Step away from the breakfast spread. You’ll want to keep it light this morning in anticipation of a feast-on-your-feet brunch at Borough Market, close to London Bridge station. Most of the market was designed in 1851 but traders have peddled goods here since the 12th century. Aim to get there for the 10am opening as crowds peak around lunchtime. Try fluffy French pastries at Comptoir Gourmand, thick salt-beef bagels at Nana Fanny’s, empanadas from Argentine spot Porteña, Japanese bento boxes at Oroshi… the list goes on.

Next, stride calories off along the Thames Path, a promenade running along the South Bank. It’s a shape-shifting area that’s undergone several reinventions, and happened to be a hotbed of licentiousness in mediaeval times. In the Bard’s day, audiences at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre were so open to solicitation that it’s said some prostitutes knew every line by heart. Continue along the Thames and you’ll notice a tale-of-two-cities tussle between the buildings on each side of the river. The dark-brick tower of the industrial Tate Modern gallery parries with the Baroque dome of St Paul’s to the north, while the Brutalist National Theatre bites its thumb at Palladian Somerset House.

We love it, but the blocky National Theatre ruffled feathers when it opened in 1976, described as ‘horrid and soul-sucking’ by one Architectural Record writer. Make your mind up over a bottle of Savoie Gamay and small plates (try the duck-heart spiedini) at Forza Wine on the second floor, where you perch on banquettes beneath the building’s iconic ceiling of recessed concrete squares.

SUNDAY: AFTERNOON

For a foray into London’s East End, Spitalfields is perfect for an afternoon stroll, with cobbled streets and Georgian townhouses built by French Huguenots in the 18th century. Stop in for coffee at Japanese-influenced Nagare, the new resident of a beautiful old greengrocer on Brushfield Street. Get a brew from their La Marzocco machine and snaffle a brown-butter brûlée cake before they’re gone.

You can buy capital keepsakes at London Undercover on Hanbury Street, who handcraft umbrellas with oak, hickory and cane handles. As for pubs, they don’t come more classic than the Pride of Spitalfields, a proper East End boozer that feels like a time capsule, maroon carpets and all.

National fans will be in raptures at the Barbican, just north of the City of London. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s Grade II-listed Brutalist masterpiece is among London’s most famous post-war architecture. It’s home to the Barbican Centre, where there’s a constant rotation of art and photography exhibitions, auteur film screenings and performances by the resident London Symphony Orchestra. Plan way ahead and book a free ticket to the verdant Conservatory, where 2,000 species of tropical plants soften the angular concrete and brick.

SUNDAY: EVENING

Time to hit Hackney, a swathe of East London with an infectious, dressed-down energy. Take the Overground from Liverpool Street to London Fields, an area with a real buzz in the evening and chock-full of independent bars and new-wave restaurants.

Most of the action takes place on buzzy, bar-lined Broadway Market, but we’d swing by Wingnut Wines on Westgate Street, where sommeliers embrace the funk with their selection of natural and biodynamic varieties. Get a stellar last supper at Brat x Climpson’s Arch, where wood-fired cooking gives its covered courtyard a gloriously smoky perfume. Brat is an old English word for ‘turbot’, which here is the signature dish served whole, grilled over coals. Beyond that, a new menu is chalked up on blackboards each day; you might see crab with cucumbers, aged Tamworth pork chops or ‘burnt’ Basque cheesecake with seasonal fruit. Cap the weekend with a Martini at Bambi, a minimalist, wood-panelled restaurant and listening bar with a Friendly Pressure sound system and a vinyl library curated by DJ, poet and founder of Run Dem Crew, Charlie Dark.

NEED TO KNOW

Transport London Heathrow is the airport to aim for — it has the quickest links into central London. The Heathrow Express whisks you to Paddington in 15 minutes; a taxi will take you around an hour if traffic plays nicely. If you’re arriving from within the UK, all of London’s terminal stations are within easy reach of the city centre. During your stay, the Underground and Overground will take you almost everywhere you’ll want to go and accept contactless card payments. Ubers are plentiful and widely available Lime Bikes are ideal for short hops.

When to go London’s a year-round destination. Crowds peak between June and August, when pub gardens are in season, restaurants spill out onto terraces and parks are full of picnickers. Late spring is also an excellent time to visit, when it’s quieter but warm weather is on its way in and the city’s leafy boroughs have burst into bud.

What to buy In Central London, Dover Street Market and Machine-A are big hitters on the fashion scene; LN-CC in Hackney has been giving them a run for their money in recent years. For niche fragrances, candles and incense, try the Mayfair branch of Perfumer H, founded by classically-trained British perfumer Lyn Harris. Aram Store, occupying two Victorian buildings on Drury Lane, has been selling covetable Modernist furniture, lighting and accessories since 1964.

Bags packed? Explore our full collection of London hotels

Additional photography by Hannah Dace and Michaela Watkinson