185 Best Sights in London, England

Tucked away on traffic-clogged Victoria Street lies this remarkable neo-Byzantine gem, seat of the Archbishop of Westminster, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. Faced with building a church with Westminster Abbey as a neighbor, architect John Francis Bentley looked to the east for inspiration, to the basilicas of St. Mark's in Venice and the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. The asymmetrical redbrick edifice, dating to 1903, is banded with stripes of Portland stone and abutted by a 272-foot bell tower at the northwest corner, ascendable by elevator for sterling views.

The interior remains incomplete, the unfinished overhead brickwork of the ceiling lending the church a dark brooding intensity. The side chapels, including the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Souls Chapel, are beautifully finished in glittering mosaics. The Lady Chapel—dedicated to the Virgin Mary—is also sumptuously decorated. Look for the Stations of the Cross, done here by Eric Gill, and the striking baldachin—the enormous stone canopy standing over the altar with a giant cross suspended in front of it. The nave, the widest in the country, is constructed in green marble, which also has a Byzantine connection—it was cut from the same place as the marble used in the Hagia Sofia, and was almost confiscated by warring Turks as it traveled west. All told, more than 100 different types of marble can be found within the cathedral's interior. There's a café in the crypt.

The English role in the exploding contemporary art scene has been major, thanks in good portion to Jay Joplin's influential gallery, whose location has hopped around London since 1993. This striking modern concrete structure was the first freestanding building to be built in the area for 30 years when it opened in 2006. It is home base for an array of British artists who have won the Turner Prize, including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and Antony Gormley. The White Cube Bermondsey, which opened in 2012, is a larger, but still free-to-enter, commercial gallery space.

When the United Kingdom's highest-profile commercial gallery moved to this huge converted 1970s-era warehouse on Bermondsey Street (making it the largest commercial gallery space in Europe), it sealed the area's reputation as a rising art-scene hot spot. This is the home gallery of some of today's top contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin, Georg Baselitz, Antony Gormley, Isamu Noguchi, Gabriel Orozco, Harland Miller, Anselm Kiefer, and several other artists with international reputations. An antiseptic central cuboid gallery, the "white cube"—also called 9 x 9 x 9 (meters, that is)—rests between two other spaces that host smaller exhibitions. There is also a bookshop and auditorium.

A great place to buy Hogarth prints is at Fosters Bookshop, based in Chiswick's oldest shop building. The shop has its original Georgian frontage, creaking floorboards, and a glorious number of original Victorian novels and essays.

Located on what was once one of the worst slum streets in London, this achingly contemporary gallery space (MacGarry's third in the East End—she's been here since 2002) has an excellent reputation for its shows of cutting-edge international artists like Chicks on Speed, Luke Rudolf, and Iain Forsythe & Jane Pollard, with a particular emphasis on conceptual works and video.