It’s that time again, where we get to be incredibly nosy into loads of London’s iconic buildings that aren’t normally open to the public completely and utterly free.
If you’re like us you’ll have your weekend completely planned out, but if not, we’re here to give you a heads up to what’s where and how you can plan your weekend.
How can I find out what’s on?
First up, the app. It’s available on all platforms and can be found by sticking “Open House” London in the search bar. It should have a green logo and the loading page will look like this:
There are loads of things up there – but a word of warning – a lot of the pre-booked things will be booked up by now. But you can still see loads. On the app, select the filter for the day you want to go, and uncheck the booking locations and you’ll be left with a list of hundreds of locations you can still visit.
How did we do it?
Well, there were 2 things we desperately wanted to see, and we planned our way around that – looking both at availability of days and whether we could book or not. We’ve ended up with both days centered around different parts of London.
When we couldn’t decide or narrow it down, we decided that we would check which buildings were open to the public the rest of the year round (very handily on the Open House website).
Once we booked in for the ones we found that needed booking we planned the rest of the day around it, over planning (a Jess speciality) so that if any were too full or too busy or we couldn’t get in, we still had backups.
Have we got any tips?
Yes! Enter the ballot for the cool buildings like 10 Downing Street, the Shard and the BT tower amongst others – they’re still open and how great would it be to get in to! You can enter the ballot on the website here.
What’s our itinerary?
Ok, so our weekend is jam packed but as an example for you, here is our Sunday!
- Foreign And Commonwealth Office (1000-1615)
- Westminster Hall (needs to be booked)
- Roman Bath (1200-1645)
- Two Temple Place (1000-1630)
- Apothecaries’ Hall (1000-1615)
- Stationers’ Hall (1000-1615)
- St Vestadias Foster (1000-1630)
- Guildhall (1000-1630)
- City Churches St Lawrence Jewry (1000-1645)
- Billingsgate Roman House and Bath (1100-1530)
- Bevis Marks Synagogue (1000-1315)
- Masonic Temple, Andaz Liverpool Street (1000-1615)
And don’t worry, if we finish early we’ve scoped out some museums we can visit nearby too.
What other buildings would we recommend?
Ok, so you don’t fancy our line up, well here are some other awesome buildings you can visit, without booking and all for free of course!
- Senate House
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- Buddhapadipa Temple
- Greenwich Reach Swing Bridge
- Ruins of Garrison Church
- St Bartholomew’s Hospital
- Blue House Yard
- Turning Earth
- Crystal Palace Subway
- Mondrian House
We’ll be trying to learn as much as we can on our way through, and Jess will be giving us a brief history lesson via Instagram Stories over the weekend so make sure you follow us over at instagram.com/fourthousandweeks