Greenwich, a must visit: what to see, where to eat and what to pay for
Greenwich has four paid attractions within six minutes of each other and most visitors buy all four, run out of legs by two in the afternoon and never reach the part that people who live here actually come for. This route does it the other way round. Museums first while you are fresh, the hill in the middle, and the river pubs at the end when the light is going and the tide is in.
- Distance
- 3.5 miles
- Time
- 6 to 7 hours with stops
- Start
- Cutty Sark DLR, or Greenwich Pier by boat
- End
- The Cutty Sark Tavern, Ballast Quay
- Cost
- Free, or £43 with the two tickets worth buying
- Best for
- A second or third day in London, and anyone bored of central
11 min readChecked
Arrive by boat, and do it one way
The Uber Boat takes about 25 minutes from Tower Pier and 40 from Embankment to Greenwich Pier, and it is the single best thing you will do all day, because the approach shows you the whole reason the town is laid out the way it is. The Old Royal Naval College sits open to the water with a deliberate gap down the middle, and that gap exists because Queen Mary refused to have her view of the river blocked. You cannot read that from the land side. You can read it instantly from a boat.
Book one way only. Coming home, the DLR from Cutty Sark to Bank takes fifteen minutes and costs a normal tube fare, and after seven hours on your feet you will not want another 40 minutes on the water.
- Boat from Tower or Embankment
- £11.40 to £13.70
- Boat from Canary Wharf
- £6.20 to £7.40
- Hop-on hop-off day ticket
- £29.30 online
- DLR back to Bank
- Standard TfL fare
Central and East zones with contactless, off peak and peak. £13.50 in the Uber Boat app
East zone only, with contactless. The short hop if you are coming off the Jubilee line
Only worth it if you are making three or more trips
Fifteen minutes from Cutty Sark
River fares do not count towards your daily TfL cap. The boat is charged separately even on the same card, which catches people out at the end of a heavy travel day.
The route, stop by stop
Everything below is within a fifteen minute walk of everything else except the climb to the Observatory, which is the only real hill in the day. Times are walking times between the stops as written, not Google estimates from the station.
Cutty Sark
King William Walk SE10 9HT · daily 10am to 5pm, last entry 4.15pm · £22 adult, £11 child
The last tea clipper, held three metres in the air on a glass collar so you can walk underneath the hull and look up at it. The under-the-ship bit is the reason to go in. The deck is a deck. Ninety minutes is plenty and forty-five is honest.
4 minute walk
Greenwich Market
College Approach SE10 9HZ · daily 10am to 5.30pm · free
Covered, so it is the wet-weather stop. Over 120 traders across two sites, and the food end is genuinely good rather than tourist good. Go now, eat here, and you have bought yourself four more hours before anyone gets hungry again.
3 minute walk
Old Royal Naval College, the grounds
SE10 9NN · grounds daily 8am to 11pm · free
Walk in off College Approach and down the middle. Wren designed it, Hawksmoor finished a lot of it, and the whole composition exists to frame the Queen's House at the far end. This is the free part and it is the best-looking thing in Greenwich.
2 minute walk
The Painted Hall
SE10 9NN · daily 10am to 5pm · £19 adult, children free
Thornhill spent nineteen years painting it. It was built as a dining hall for retired sailors, who thought it was too grand to eat in, so they ate elsewhere and it became a tourist attraction almost immediately. Lie on one of the mirrored trolleys rather than craning your neck. This is the one paid ticket in Greenwich that nobody regrets.
6 minute walk
Queen's House
Romney Road SE10 9NF · daily 10am to 5pm, last entry 4.15pm · free
England's first classical building, by Inigo Jones, and free. Go for the Tulip Stairs, the first geometric self-supporting spiral staircase built in the country, and the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I. Thirty minutes.
2 minute walk
National Maritime Museum
Romney Road SE10 9NF · daily 10am to 5pm, last entry 4.15pm · free
Free, enormous, and the one people skip because they have already paid for two things. Nelson's actual coat with the actual bullet hole is in here. If you have children, The Cove playground is the reason they will not mind the rest of the day.
12 minute walk, uphill
Royal Observatory
Blackheath Avenue SE10 8XJ · daily 10am to 5pm, 10am to 6pm in September · £24 adult, £12 child
The Prime Meridian line, Flamsteed House and the Great Equatorial Telescope. The line itself is a strip of metal with a queue on it. What you are paying for is the clock story, Harrison's marine chronometers, and the reason the whole world sets its watch to a hill in south-east London.
1 minute walk
The view from outside the Observatory
Greenwich Park · free, always
Free, and better than anything you see through a window inside. The Queen's House, the two domes, Canary Wharf and the City all stacked in one frame. Come back up here at dusk if you only do one thing twice.
18 minute walk downhill, north-east
Trafalgar Tavern
Park Row SE10 9NW
Built in 1837 on the river wall. Liberal cabinet ministers used to come downriver by barge to eat whitebait here, a tradition that ran until Gladstone's outgoing cabinet held the last one in 1885. Dickens set the wedding breakfast in Our Mutual Friend in the Hawke Room upstairs. It is busy, it knows what it is, and the windows are worth the crowd.
3 minute walk
The Sail Loft
11 Victoria Parade SE10 9FR
The modern one, opened 2016, two floors of glass with the river on three sides. No history at all, which is the point: it is the only place on this stretch where you get the Canary Wharf view head-on with a proper kitchen behind you. Upstairs, by the window, before six.
7 minute walk east along the river path
The Cutty Sark Tavern
6 to 7 Ballast Quay SE10 9PD
Early nineteenth century, Grade II listed, and far enough along Ballast Quay that the day-trippers do not reach it. It was the Union Tavern, named for the 1801 union with Ireland, and took the clipper's name in 1951 when the ship arrived in Greenwich. Bow window upstairs, tide coming in, end of the day. This is the stop the other guides leave out.
Which tickets are actually worth it
Four paid attractions, and the honest answer is that two of them are worth the money and the combination ticket is only worth it if you were always going to do both.
- The Painted Hall
- £19
- Royal Observatory
- £24
- Cutty Sark
- £22
- RMG Day Pass
- £38 adult, £19 child
- Maritime Museum, Queen's House, the grounds
- Free
Buy it. Nothing else in London looks like this for the money
Buy it if you like clocks, ships or arguments about longitude. Skip it if you only want the meridian photo, which is a metal strip with a queue
Borderline. Worth it with children, and worth it for the hull from underneath. Otherwise the ship photographs fine from the outside
Observatory plus Cutty Sark. Saves £8 if and only if you wanted both
All three, no ticket, no booking needed
The Peter Harrison Planetarium is closed for renovation. There is a replacement planetarium experience inside the National Maritime Museum, which is free, so do not buy an Observatory ticket expecting a show.
What it costs
With your own guide
Private day, your itinerary
You tell us what the day is for. We build it. Up to 8 hours.
- Up to 5 people
- £340
- 6 to 8 people
- £480
Want a tailor-made London trip? Tell us who’s coming and what you’d love to see. Request your personalised quote
What else you will spend
Rough, and on the day, whether you come with us or not.
- Travel
- £6 to £14
- Tickets
- £19 to £43
- Lunch
- £10 to £15
- Drinks
- £6 to £8 a pint
DLR both ways, or £11.40 to £13.70 one way if you arrive by Uber Boat from Tower Pier
The Painted Hall is £19 and the one to buy. Add the Observatory at £24 only if you want the clocks, and the museums and the park are free
Greenwich Market, which is covered and open daily
The Trafalgar Tavern, the Sail Loft, the Cutty Sark Tavern
The bit almost nobody does
The Greenwich Foot Tunnel starts in the glass-domed rotunda beside the Cutty Sark and runs under the river to Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs. It opened in 1902 so that south London labourers could walk to the docks, it is 370 metres long, it is free, and it is open around the clock.
Walk through, come up the other side, turn round. The view back at Greenwich from Island Gardens is the one Canaletto painted around 1750, and it has barely changed. Twenty-five minutes for the round trip, no ticket, and it is the best free photograph in south-east London.
The lifts are not always running at both ends. If step-free access matters, check before you commit, because it is 100 steps down on the Greenwich side and 87 back up at Island Gardens.
What we leave out, and why
The Fan Museum is charming and it is not worth an hour of a one-day visit. The tourist land train that loops the park exists to save you a hill you should walk.
Adding the O2, the right way
North Greenwich, where the O2 is, is a different place from Greenwich and people mix them up constantly. By road it is twenty minutes on the 188 bus. By river it is one stop: the Uber Boat from Greenwich Pier to North Greenwich Pier takes about ten minutes, an East zone fare of £6.20 to £7.40 with contactless. Do Greenwich first, take the boat at dusk, and finish at the O2 with the Jubilee line home.
Questions people actually ask
Is Greenwich worth a full day?
Yes, and it is one of the few places outside central London where a full day fills itself. Four paid attractions, three free ones, a covered market and a river path, all within a fifteen minute walk of each other. Half a day works if you skip the Observatory hill.
What is free in Greenwich?
The Old Royal Naval College grounds, the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, Greenwich Park, the view from the Observatory hill, Greenwich Market to walk round, and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. That is a complete day without a ticket.
How do I get to Greenwich from central London?
DLR to Cutty Sark from Bank in about fifteen minutes, mainline from London Bridge to Greenwich in about eight, or Uber Boat in about 25 minutes from Tower Pier and 40 from Embankment. Arrive by boat and leave by DLR.
Which Greenwich ticket is the best value?
The Painted Hall at £19. The Royal Museums Greenwich Day Pass at £38 covers the Royal Observatory and the Cutty Sark and saves about £8, but only if you genuinely wanted both.
Which are the best riverside pubs in Greenwich?
Three, in this order: the Trafalgar Tavern on Park Row for the history and the windows, the Sail Loft on Victoria Parade for the Canary Wharf view, and the Cutty Sark Tavern on Ballast Quay because it is far enough out that it stays a local.