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Things to do in London today

The day’s best things to do all in one place

Rosie Hewitson
Written by
Rosie Hewitson
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Got a few hours to kill today? You’re in luck. London is one of the very best places on the planet to be when you find yourself with a bit of spare time.

In this city, you’re never too far away from a picturesque park, a lovely pub or a cracking cinema where you could while away a few hours. And on any given day, you’ve got a wealth of world-class art shows, blockbuster theatre and top museum exhibitions to choose from if you’re twiddling your thumbs. 

And while London has a reputation for being pricy, it’s also one of the best places in the world to find fun things to do on a budget, whether that’s a slap-up meal that won’t break the bank or the wealth of free attractions across town. 

Whatever you feel like doing today, you can guarantee that London has the answer. Here are just a few suggestions of our favourite things on right now. Don’t forget that you can also check out our area guides if you’re after something in your immediate vicinity. 

You have absolutely no excuse to be bored in London ever again!

RECOMMENDED: Find even more inspiration with our round-up of the best things to do in London this week.

Things to do in London today

Alice's Adventures Underground
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Theatre
  • Immersive
  • Waterloo
  • Recommended
This review is from 2017; ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’ is due to return to brand new venue Labyrinth, but had been postponed indefinitely due to delays in the construction. ‘We’re all mad here’, says a grinning purple Cheshire cat. He’s not wrong. I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and it is absolutely bonkers. Well, technically I’m in the Vaults in Waterloo, but it feels like another world. After a sell-out run in 2015, Les Enfants Terribles and ebp’s ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’ has returned to the Vaults for more immersive adventures. We’re ushered into a room filled with dusty books, grand chandeliers, an old piano, and a looking glass, of course. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman appears behind the looking glass. She is Alice, presumably, but she can’t remember her name. ‘Who am I?’ she asks, before disappearing. But that’s the last we see of her for a while, because this is not Alice’s adventure – it’s ours. Like a group of excited schoolchildren, we move through a tunnel lined with yellowing book pages and our adventure begins. You decide whether to ‘eat me’ or ‘drink me’ to determine which path you’ll take (there are 24 adventures happening at the same time, making it almost impossible to see the same show twice). You’re given a playing card and split into ‘suits’. Each group is led by a performer throughout, which means there’s an actual narrative (albeit a totally mad one), so you’re not left wandering aimlessly. It’s not just the experience that’s impressive
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Bethnal Green
  • Recommended
The first temporary exhibition at Young V&A is a real delight, and should appeal to grown-up Nippophiles just as much as school kids. ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ is a grab bag of the more eye-catching highlights of the past few centuries of Japanese pop culture, taking in everything from Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’ to copious Studio Ghibli appearances, to a draw-your-own manga craft corner (complete with arrows to reminds you to draw the cells from right to left). It is relatively light on information about the individual items, and in theory the eclecticism should be a bit bewildering: how exactly do a display of Transformers toys, an ornate screen covered in images of mischievous rabbits, and a truly horrifying folk model of a mermaid that looks like a trout crossed with a zombie foetus all relate to each other? Quite well actually! The mass of eye-popping artifacts is subdivided into four thoughtful zones: sky, sea, forest and city. The import of each of these areas to Japanese culture is stressed, and while there’s little editorialising beyond that, the linkages between the country’s rich folklore and head-spinning contemporary culture are made clear - we see, for instance, how Ghibli’s arboreal masterpiece ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ fits into a long tradition of stories of supernatural encounters in the deep woods, or how Sylvanian Families toys were born out of hundreds-of-years old netsuke animal sculptures. There’s no single object liable to blow your mind in and of itself, and
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • King’s Cross
  • Recommended
Like many a boomer child, Tom Hanks was smitten with the Apollo moon landings; but Tom Hanks being Tom Hanks, he never became unsmitten. The most beloved man in Hollywood has been nurturing a lunar side hustle for some time now: as well as starring in the film ‘Apollo 13’, he’s been involved in lower-key works, producing the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-writing the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’. Staged in Kings Cross’s new, projection-based performance space Lightroom, ‘The Moonwalkers’ is essentially a documentary with bells on, a collaboration between Hanks and the venue, with a script co-written by the actor and Christopher Riley. It is, naturally, narrated by Hanks. Although it makes a point of looking forward to next year’s Artemis mission – the first manned flight to the moon since 1972 – ‘The Moonwalkers’ is a homage to both the Apollo landings and the wonder the Apollo landings instilled in the world.  Starting with JFK’s rousing ‘we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard’ speech, it’s upbeat and America-centric, but well-judged. The main action and most spectacular visuals are projected on the room’s huge front wall, but the side walls cram in smaller details: the female mathematicians – many of them Black – who made the project possible are duly credited, which they certainly weren’t when I was young (or at the time of the landings,for that matter). There’s no contextualising talk
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Aldwych
  • Recommended
Imagine coming up with the most important technological innovation in modern history – the internet – and then seeing it used almost exclusively for ordering McDonald’s at 3am, arguing with strangers and sharing funny pictures of cats. This exhibition ignores the burgers and yelling in favour of the kittens, because cute, it turns out, is powerful.  Cuteness here is presented as a cultural powerhouse, an internet language that’s spread its grammar throughout society, a contemporary aesthetic force with almost no equal. Does that hypothesis work? Not necessarily, but it’s fun to watch them argue it. The exhibition is a mind-melting assault on the senses, a barrage of objects, ephemera, history and artworks that shoves cuteness down your eyeballs until you want to burst (into pink love hearts). It’s complex, tiring, clever, and very good. It starts with kittens. Louis Wain’s turn-of-the-century illustrations present them as friendly, naughty little things, all big eyed and fuzzy. Contemporary artist Andy Holden shows his grandmother’s collection of ceramic felines, with their long necks and huge ears. This is the crux of cute: lovable, adorable, soft, gentle, unthreatening, childlike, innocent.  It’s a set of attributes that's safe, but also hugely commodifiable. A display of Hello Kitty dolls and objects (which leads into a ridiculous, cynical and pretty pointless, Hello Kitty disco room) subtly exposes the capitalist heart of the character, its history as a tool of Japanese i
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Chelsea
  • Recommended
The guts of society are hidden away, but Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has spent his long career eviscerating them and putting them on display. All the things that make modern life tick – the mines for our batteries, the farms for our food, the abattoirs for our meat – are kept secret, out of view because they lay bare the damage we’re doing to the planet. Burtynsky’s vast, mega-scale photographs here at the Saatchi Gallery (there’s a concurrent, free, smaller show of his work at Flowers Gallery too) drag those private shames out into the open. He photographs salt marshes carving up the Spanish coastline, gold mines spilling cyanide into the Johannesburg’s groundwater, circular crops sucking Saudi Arabia’s aquifers dry, diamond mines leaking toxic waste into the hills of South Africa. It would make for grim viewing if it wasn’t all so beautiful. Burtynsky finds the sublime in the vile, he highlights the washes of hyper-saturated colour in criss-crossing striated hills and planes, the geometric composition of riverbeds and salt lakes. Everything is pushed to such an extreme – in size and colour – and so rich in aesthetic detail that it looks more abstract than anything real could ever be. It’s not beautiful, it’s actually toxic and damaging and bad And that’s his trick. The work lulls you into a state of awe at all the beauty of the world, and then big Ed runs in to bash you over the head with a baseball bat while yelling ‘wrong! It’s not beautiful, it’s actually tox
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • price 0 of 4
  • Bankside
  • Recommended
The cost of trade isn’t just financial. The goods we consume have historically been paid for in blood too, in actual lives. And this human cost of the history of trade is at the heart of this year’s Turbine Hall installation. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui has draped the cavernous space in vast reams of fabric. The first is a huge red and gold sail, a symbol of the transatlantic trade of goods and people, and how ships ferried both across the ocean. Many of the slaves from West Africa were forcefully sent to work on sugar plantations to fuel the alcohol industry, creating spirits which would then be sent to Europe before making their way back to West Africa. Now look close: that gleaming golden sail is made of bottle caps. It’s a whole circular economy of trade, goods, lives, culture and history, billowing in the Turbine Hall. In the back of the space, a vast black sheet hangs from the ceiling to the floor, made of brandy and whisky bottle tops, flattened and knitted together. It could be a fence for containing, a wall for defending, it could be a crashing wave. Whatever it is, it ripples with the same symbolism as the sail: Africa, trade, exploitation, countless bodies.  The central work – human-like forms which coalesce into a globe if you stand in the right spot – is too easily dwarfed by the bigger pieces. And those big pieces are in turn dwarfed by the Turbine Hall. It’s just such an enormous, impossible space to deal with, in this doesn't deal with it as others have.  But i
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  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Aldwych
  • Recommended
Heads hang heavy, bodies sink into the shadowy corners of the room. Frank Auerbach’s charcoal portraits are dismal, dour things, heaving with hurt and pain, but they’re also brutally, shockingly beautiful. Auerbach came of age alongside Leon Kossoff, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon (he’s still at it well into his 90s too), part of a group of Londoners intent on reworking the form of painting itself. Auerbach did that in the post-war period with thick globs of pigment, creating dense, viscous canvases, closer to sculptures than paintings. But this show at the Courtauld is about his charcoal portraits from the 1950s and ’60s.  They’re not his most famous works, but they’re incredible. Each one is drawn and redrawn over and over again, erased and remade, erased and remade, so many times that he wears through the paper. They’re feverish, violent, desperate things.  Grim, spectral presences on scarred landscapes His sitters always turn away, eyes in the gutter, shoulders slumped. Leon Kossoff is a vast cranium, his face lost in darkness. Auerbach’s wife Julia is fragile and stick thin. Stella West is skeletal and sickly. Gerda Boehm is sharp and fractured. Everyone here looks somehow haunted. Only Auerbach himself looks directly out at the viewer, in a rare early self-portrait, but it’s maybe the least successful work here. It’s better when he’s looking outside of himself, digging at another’s essence and pain. Some works are nothing but shadow, a smudge of grey forming a cheek in
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Bloomsbury
  • Recommended
Life in the Roman empire was as mundane as life in 2024. ‘Legion’ tells the story of a single Roman soldier, recounting a life of hard work, ambition, disappointment and unreachable goals. Take out all the blood and swords, swap the marching for a commute from Stevenage, and it could be the life of any present day office worker.  Claudius Terentianus had hopes and ambitions. He wanted to be a great legionary in emperor Trajan’s army. But the legion wouldn't have him, so he had to settle for the lowly marines. Once in, he had to scramble for money and social connections to be promoted to the legion, where he found a life of endless marching and battles, surrounded by comrades with their own ambitions to join the cavalry or become a standard bearer. This show is full of stunning symbols of everyday life for Roman soldiers from across the empire. Red wool socks to protect against the rub of hobnailed leather sandals, purses holding a handful of silver coins, dice for gambling, letters home pleading for a new tunic. It’s just the drudgery of normal existence, same in 60AD as it is now. Battles, bloodshed and the spoils of war And amongst all that, symbols of war: gleaming bronze helmets, swords long rusted into their scabbards, a pile of near-fossilised chainmail. A curved cylinder is the only complete long shield in existence, replete with ornate linework and winged victories. It’s jaw dropping.  It wasn’t all blind, faceless obedience though. A crushed silver bust of emperor G
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Trafalgar Square
  • Recommended
It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too. It starts, like any good procession, with a load of geezers with trumpets, parping to herald the arrival of victorious Caesar. As they blare, a Black soldier in gorgeous, gilded armour looks back, leading you to the next panel where statues of gods are paraded on carts. Then come the spoils of war, with mounds of seized weapons and armour piled high, then come vases and sacrificial animals, riders on elephant-back, men struggling to carry the loot that symbolises their victory. The final panel, Caesar himself bringing up the rear, remains in Hampton Court, so there is no conclusion here, just a steady, unstoppable stream of glory and rejoicing.  The paintings are faded and damaged, and have been so badly lit that you can only see them properly from a distance and at an angle. But still, they remain breathtaking in their sweeping, chaotic beauty.  Partly, this massive work is a celebration of the glories of the classical world and its brilliance, seen from the other side of some very dark ages. But along with its rise, you can’t help but also think of Rome's demise, of what would eventually come a
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • South Bank
  • Recommended
Can stone flow? Can metal ooze? Can hardness be rendered soft? I mean, generally, no. But artists are alchemists at heart, always trying to enact some kind of magical transformation, so they’re not going to let something like solidity stand in their way.  This show looks at 60 years of artists hellbent on the impossible: creating sculptures that ooze and bulge and throb and breathe. It’s all bodily and undulating, implying movement and growth and change and guts.  Artist duo Drift’s silk lampshades rise and fall from the ceiling as you walk in, pulsating like jellyfish. Teresa Solar Abboud’s airbrushed constructions look like the limbs of some impossible being that’s got itself stuck in a rockface. Marguerite Humeau’s futuristic society of socialist insects is familiar but uncomfortably post-apocalyptic. It's like walking into an alien aquarium, filled with creatures your brain can’t quite process. But things are human too. Holly Hendry’s twisting knots of metal ducting look like freshly plucked guts, Eve Fabregas’s overwhelming, giant intestines are throbbing and literally visceral. All these sculptures look fleshy, porous, squishy.  All these sculptures look fleshy, porous, squishy Other works deal more directly with immateriality, like Ruth Asawa’s hanging structures which seem to have somehow made soundwaves permanent, or Michel Blazy's tower of scaffolding which burps out huge sheets of foam.  The concept of the show is a bit too fluid for its own good though. It’s hard

More things to do in London today

  • Restaurants
  • price 1 of 4

London might well be the world’s greatest city for top nosh, but it’s also expensive enough that most of us cant eat out as much as we’d like to. But never fear! Everything in this list has been priced at £10 a head or less to eat in or takeaway, but many of them will have you well-fed for a fiver. And variety is the name of the game – so expect London staples like fish ’n’ chips or pie ’n’ mash, but also the best banh mi, patties, gozleme, shawarma, steamed buns, lahmacun and moreNot only will visiting these places give you the kind of buzz only a bargain bite can deliver, you can relish the fact that you’re supporting small London businesses. Winner winner, chicken dinner!

Have a wander round one of the city’s finest museums
  • Museums

London is absolutely world class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better. Here are some of our absolute faves. 

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  • Theatre

Want to know what the best theatre shows running in London right now are? Well you’ve come to the right place. This is our regularly-updated round-up of the very best stage shows, musicals plays and everything in between that you can currently see on London’s stages, from massive West End musicals that have been in place for years, to cool fringe theatre productions that’ll be around for just a few weeks. Our recommendations are all based upon reviews by our team of theatre critics.

  • Attractions

Whether you’re a visitor, a daytripper or a tourist in your own hometown, there are certain iconic London attractions that you simply have to visit. These museums, galleries, monuments and parks are part of the city’s fabric – to experience them is to uncover the capital’s identity, culture and history. But where to begin? We’ve pulled together a list of the 50 best attractions in London for you to start ticking off your bucket list.

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  • Art

Looking at great art needn’t cost the same as buying great art. With a shed-load of free art exhibitions in the capital, wandering through sculptures, being blinded by neon or admiring some of the best photography in London doesn’t cost a penny. Here’s our pick of the best free art exhibitions this week and beyond.

  • Things to do

While there are always more than enough festive things to do in London – light displays, ice rinks, Bavarian markets, endless department-store browsing – sometimes we all need to get out of the Christmas-infested capital. Away from the noise, smog and, yes, all that endless, crowded shopping. What’s needed is crisp country air, a stiff walk or a serene spa day. Here are our fave day trips from London to enjoy this winter, all under two hours from Zone 1.

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  • Bars and pubs

London is perhaps the perfect pub city. There’s a boozer for almost every kind of person – even the non-drinkers among us – and they’re a vital part of the capital’s lifeblood. They provide community, entertainment and culture, and not only help us navigate our way around town but give us a place to stop, sit and enjoy the city. There are roughly 3,500 pubs in London. That might be a shocking 25 percent less than there were two decades ago, but it’s still a fair amount of options when it comes to choosing a place to meet your mates, go on a date, or rock up for a solo drink and have some much-treasured alone time. We’ve tried and tested inns, taverns and boozers across the city to bring you a list of the very finest. 

  • Film

With more than a hundred cinemas inside the M25, London is as well served for picture houses as any city on earth. And they come in all shapes and sizes. From goliath multiplexes to boutique independents, to those – like Peckham’s beloved Peckhamplex and Walthamstow’s Empire – that sit at the nexus of the two, there’s truly something for everyone. So without further ado, here are London’s best cinemas as chosen by our readers. 

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  • Things to do

Grab a bunch of thrill-seeking, puzzle-solving mates and sign up for one of the many live escape room experiences London has to offer. These range from the traditional locked-room escape mission to a ‘Sherlock’-themed mystery and an all-out recreation of classic ’90s TV show ‘The Crystal Maze’. Whichever you choose, your group will have to help each other to solve puzzles within a strict time limit. Our advice? Pick your teammates wisely. 

  • Attractions
  • Parks and gardens

It's tempting to hibernate when the thermometer dips, but what a waste that would be when London's blessed with so many gigantic, historic parks to explore. As winter arrives, walking among the sculptural trees, frozen lakes and peaceful pathways is a must for anyone who wants to blow the cobwebs away. Whether you're a Royal Parks stan, a fiend for Hampstead Heath on a chilly day or a Greenwich Park fanatic, there are so many winter walks to choose from in London. So, get out there and enjoy a bracing tramp around this city's prettiest green spaces - if you're lucky, there might even be a dusting of snow to make your winter walk even more magical. 

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