Discover London with an Open City group tour…

Open City offers private group versions of its highly popular year-round tours at competitive prices and with the flexibility to meet all needs

Led by experts in London’s architecture, Open City tours cover all aspects of the built environment from central large scale regeneration zones to suburban outer boroughs and small scale community spaces.

Our private tours drawn on Open City’s three decades of experience in running the annual Open House Festival which enables interior access to buildings often not otherwise open to the public.

Our network of expert guides also includes graduates of Open City’s Golden Key Academy who represent the future voices of London’s built environment.

Open City can deliver individual tours or multiple sequential tours to meet larger group size needs with events available on weekends and weekdays throughout the year.

All prices are available on request.

Merlin Fulcher, Head of Tours at Open City

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Where can we go?

Our tours typically tour run for 2hr30 and host up to 25 participants. Prices for all group tours are available on request

**King’s Cross**

This insightful walking tour around King’s Cross Central — led by expert guide Nick Edwards — tells the story of the multi-billion regeneration project which has transformed 27 hectares of former railway land in the centre of the capital. The walk will cover the planning, design and delivery of this new large-scale mixed-use district which is now home to Central St Martins College of Art and Aga Khan Development Network along with big tech media companies such as Facebook, Google and Universal Music.

**Elephant and Castle**

This fun and engaging walking tour — led by Elephant and Castle resident and Golden Key Academy graduate Joesph Granata — explores the past, present and future of this extraordinary central London hub which was once known as the ‘Piccadilly Circus of South London’ but has at times since been controversially used as a symbol of urban decay and failed planning. This walking tour will explore how, despite Elephant and Castle’s central location and unparalleled cultural and architectural riches, the area became unfairly ignored and unloved in the late twentieth century. During this time, the area had a reputation for being an ugly, congested pocket of south London, built around not just one but two busy roundabouts and with a network of dank, pedestrian subways, at the heart of which lay a famously outdated, but nevertheless enigmatic, shopping centre.

**QE Olympic Park**

This insightful walking tour around the Olympic Park — led by expert guide Nick Edwards — tells the story of the post 2012 landscape and success of Legacy ambition, the multi-billion regeneration project which has transformed 250 hectares of former industrial land in the Lower Lea Valley, covering the pre-Games, Stratford City metropolitan plans and Legacy masterplan proposals for five new neighbourhoods alongside some ground-breaking community engagement programmes.

**Canary Wharf and East India Docks**

This walking tour around the northern end of the Isle of Dogs – delivered in partnership with Republic – takes in the area’s history as the industrial centre of a global trading empire with strong colonial ties to the empire, through its industrial decline, regeneration and recent construction boom. The event starts at West India Quay and finishes at East India Docks which is home to Republic. Once a relatively isolated part of industrial London, the area is now a financial district with towering office skyscrapers, new homes, landmark retail centres and multiple transport links to the rest of the capital.

Design District and Greenwich Peninsula

Led by up-and-coming architect and tour guide Morgan Lewis, this insightful and engaging tour will visit iconic developments across this historic 60 hectare riverside site which is the focus of an ambitious phased £8.4 billion redevelopment masterplan. Starting and finishing at Design District (home to the Bureau members club and also Canteen food hall where all participants may claim a 10 per cent discount on drinks) the walk will follow a circular route around the new waterfront neighbourhood which will soon be home to more than 35,000 people.

London Pubs

This fun and engaging walking tour — led by public historian and tour guide Sheldon K Goodman — will explore the enigmatic streets and alleys of Holborn, Farringdon and Clerkenwell which play host to a roster of legendary pubs such as The Cheshire Cheese, The Rising Sun and The Fox and Anchor. Inspired by Open City's new book Public House: A Cultural and Social History of the London Pub, the tour will celebrate the incredible diversity, design and stories of London’s public houses as we are at last able to enjoy them again.

Woolwich

Woolwich was a major manufacturing centre with factories, a dockyard and the Royal Arsenal situated on the banks of the Thames. Alongside a strong and independent civic identity, Woolwich also maintained a significant military presence: a legacy that lives on in pub names and street names such as General Gordon Square as well as the Royal Artillery barracks and the presence of the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. Recently, Woolwich has seen a period of great change. One of Historic England’s Heritage Action Zones, Powis Street has been declared a conservation area.

Covent Garden

Dubbed High Notes and the High Life, High Art and the High Street, the entertaining and insightful route — led by former Royal National Theatre head of tours Alison Rae — charts the unique and often overlooked history behind Westminster’s great theatres, galleries and cultural complexes. Revisiting these iconic locations as London re-opens its theatres and cultural delights — the tour will explore the enigmatic surroundings of Covent Garden where high art mixes with street performance, retail with relaxation and world-renowned icons such as the National Gallery and Royal Opera House rub shoulders with the informality of cultural diversions in Trafalgar Square and the Piazza.

Aldwych

This fun and engaging walking tour focuses on one of the main thoroughfares of the capital and shows how the story of the Strand is inextricably interwoven with that of London itself as the capital of the British Empire. This walking tour — led by Golden Key Academy graduate Jack Chesher — charts the development of the Strand, and demonstrates how its unique position connecting the centre of political power in Westminster and financial power in the City has defined its usage and presentation for centuries. Highlights include the grand architecture of Somerset House and Royal Courts of Justice as well as lesser known gems such as Devereux Court and Two Temple Place.

Barbican and Golden Lane

The walk — led by Jessica Barker-Wren — will explore the bold, modernist vision of the architects Chamberlin, Powell & Bon who created both Golden Lane and the Barbican estates on the north west fringes of Square Mile over three decades. It will also delve into the contributions of politicians and planners who sought to promote a new kind of inner city living — one which emphatically rejected the anti-urban ideals of the bucolic and suburban Garden City movement.

Royal Docks

This fun and engaging walking tour led by expert guide Mike Althorpe — an urban historian, architectural researcher, educator and story teller — will explore this historic former docklands area which has been tipped for massive regeneration in recent decades. The Royal Docks and surrounding area were constructed in the 1850s, and abandoned just over a century later. They have long been tipped as London’s next major regeneration opportunity. Local landmarks include the WilkinsonEyre-designed Crystal which has recently been upgraded by Architecture 00 to provide a new home for London’s City Hall, the Excel exhibition centre, which was expanded by Grimshaw in 2010; and the competition-winning Royal Victoria Dock Bridge by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.

Spitalfields to Stepney Green

This fun and engaging walking tour — led by Barratt London head of planning and Golden Key Academy graduate Martin Scholar — focuses on how the area’s built environment has changed, adapted and developed over the past 500 years to create the vibrant mix of cultural activity we see today. The tour references local buildings and street names to explore how the historical development of the district was shaped by the arrival and later large-scale departure of its Huguenot and Jewish communities. It then focusses on the arrival of the area’s vibrant and world-famous Bangladeshi community before going on to discuss and illustrate how the district’s population and built environment is rapidly changing once again.

Forest Hill and Sydenham

This walking tour from Forest Hill to Crystal Palace Park — led by architect and researcher Marianna Janowicz — explores the architecture of the area’s most prominent public buildings. Highlights include the Arts and Crafts-style Horniman Museum and Gardens, RCKa’s landmark TNG Youth and Community Centre, and the Brutalist Grade II*-listed Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. A journey through styles and periods, this engaging and accessible tour traces the power and politics behind grand architectural ambitions including Frederick Horniman’s controversial tea trade wealth, the Baths and Washhouses Act 1846 which enabled the construction of Forest Hill Pools, and the London County Council’s ambitious postwar vision for a new Modernist centre of sporting excellence.

Hackney

This insightful walking tour of Hackney — led by architecture-trained town planner Lachlan Anderson-Frank — showcases the ambitious municipal projects which sought to transform the quality of life for people living in one of London’s most deprived boroughs. The modern London Borough of Hackney covers a mix of leafy North London’s suburbs and the formerly gritty streets of the historic East End. Many of the area’s grandest squares were condemned as slums in the mid-20th century and cleared away – sometimes less than one hundred years after they were first built.

Clerkenwell

This insightful walking tour from Soho to Clerkenwell — led by writer and architectural designer Eleanor Marshall — chronicles the many public health crises throughout London’s history and reveals how bold reformers, architects and public bodies radically changed our urban environment in response. The walk will explain how urban qualities we take for granted today — such as clean water, sanitation, fresh air and natural light — came to be recognised as crucial to good living and working conditions and radically influenced the architecture of the city. The tour will also consider how the recent pandemic could reshape our city once again.

Walls of London

This insightful walking tour along the route of the ruined London Wall — led by City of London guide Paul Lincoln — chronicles how the protective stone barrier, which was originally built by the Romans, has been adapted, demolished, covered up, revealed by the blitz, and even rediscovered by recent building works. The impact of London’s wall on the historic City of London and the wider capital is immense and yet it is rarely celebrated, noticed or understood. The recent building of the London Wall Place office development by Make — featuring a series of new skywalks — has however shone a light on some new aspects of these ancient fortifications.

Thamesmead

This fun and engaging walking tour — led by Golden Key Academy graduate and architect Áine Grace — uses archive film to demonstrate the futuristic ideas and shifting identities at the heart of Thamesmead, an architecturally bold New Town built on former marshland by the Greater London Council between 1964 and 1986. Envisioned as a new town on the south eastern edges of London, Thamesmead offered a leap forward into what was seen as futuristic 21st century-style living to both residents and visitors alike. Among its most famous visitors was director Stanley Kubrick, who filmed iconic scenes from his cult classic film A Clockwork Orange on the newly built estate in 1970.

Regent's Canal

The story of London's Regent's Canal (1812) provides a fascinating insight into Georgian industrial infrastructure in early 19th century London. From an early speculative entrepreneurial scheme it became a bustling commercial waterway in the Victorian era, before falling victim to wider post-war industrial decline in the 20th century. Now transformed by developer-led regeneration into a once again busy urban thoroughfare, albeit one driven by leisure seeking and gentrification, today walking along the canal provides us with a pertinent opportunity to reflect on the changing city in all its diversity.

City of London photography

Led by acclaimed architectural photographer Grant Smith — member of world-famous architecture imaging agency VIEW — this evening tour will look at how to photograph the City’s iconic structures after dark. The tour includes Lloyd’s Building with its dramatic lighting. The tour will take in City streetscapes so you can practice with light trails. The tour ends by Tower Bridge — illuminated to emphasise its structure and with views to the Shard and London Bridge. This is an introductory tour and your guide will be on hand to guide you and answer any questions as you discover the techniques of night photography.

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