Where to stay in London: five areas compared

Stay in Covent Garden or Bloomsbury on a first trip of three or four nights. Both are on the Piccadilly line, which runs direct from Heathrow, and both put the British Museum, the National Gallery and the West End theaters within a walk. The London travel guide covers the sights and the England guide the wider route; this page settles the address. The South Bank suits travelers who want the river at the door, South Kensington suits families planning museum days, and Shoreditch suits a trip built around eating and going out.

London is too large to cross on foot, so the Tube line under your hotel matters more than the name of the district. All five areas are in fare zone 1, and each has a different airport link: the Piccadilly line serves Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and South Kensington, the Elizabeth line serves Soho and Shoreditch, and the South Bank needs one change. Pick the area first, then a hotel within a few minutes of a station named in its section below.

The price bands, from $ to $$$, rank the areas against each other as a rough guide and are not room rates. Fix your dates before you compare hotels, because on Sundays Westminster Abbey opens only for services and St Paul's Cathedral sells only a dome ticket; the three-day London itinerary shows which day goes where.

Covent Garden is the district around the old covered market, east of Charing Cross Road, and Soho is the grid of narrow streets on the other side of that road. Together they make up most of the West End, where London's big theaters stand a few streets apart. Trafalgar Square is at the southern edge, and the National Gallery on it is free: it opens daily from 10:00 to 18:00 and stays open until 21:00 on Fridays.

Three stations serve the area. Covent Garden is on the Piccadilly line, Leicester Square on the Piccadilly and Northern lines, and Tottenham Court Road on the Central, Northern and Elizabeth lines. From Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3, Transport for London's journey planner gives 51 minutes to Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line with no change, for £5.90, or 33 minutes to Tottenham Court Road on the Elizabeth line for £15.50. The reason to pay this area's rates is the end of the evening: a show finishes a short walk from your bed.

You pay for that in noise and in the room rate, the highest band of the five. The streets stay busy past midnight, so ask for a room at the back of the building. The Government of Canada's travel advice for the United Kingdom says cellphone theft is common in certain tourist areas of London and names Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square among the places where thieves are most active. It also says never to hang a bag on the back of a chair in a restaurant, pub or bar.

The South Bank is the south side of the Thames between Waterloo and Tower Bridge. A riverside path runs the whole way and passes, from west to east, the Southbank Centre, Tate Modern, Shakespeare's Globe and Borough Market. Tate Modern is free and opens from 10:00 to 18:00 Sunday to Thursday and until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. Borough Market trades Tuesday to Sunday and is shut on Mondays.

The Jubilee line ties the area together, with stations at Waterloo, Southwark and London Bridge, and it continues across the river to Westminster. Waterloo also has the Bakerloo and Northern lines. London Bridge is the useful station for Gatwick: Thameslink trains from the airport stop there, and the pay as you go fare is £10.70 outside the weekday morning peak. St Paul's Cathedral is a walk away too, over the Millennium Bridge from Tate Modern.

Heathrow is the weak point, because neither airport line reaches the South Bank. Ride the Piccadilly line to Green Park and change to the Jubilee line, or take the Elizabeth line to Paddington and the Bakerloo line from there to Waterloo. Evenings are quieter here than in the West End, with fewer late bars, and Borough Market says its own visitor numbers peak on Saturday afternoons.

Bloomsbury is the district of garden squares north of Covent Garden, built around the British Museum. The museum is free and opens daily from 10:00 to 17:00, and until 20:30 on Fridays; it advises booking a free timed ticket, which gives priority entry in busy periods. Covent Garden and Soho are a walk to the south, so a Bloomsbury address shares the West End's evenings without its noise.

Russell Square station is on the Piccadilly line: 55 minutes from Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 with no change, for £5.90. The same line continues to Holborn, Covent Garden and Leicester Square, and reaches South Kensington in 14 minutes. King's Cross St Pancras, at the northern edge, has six Tube lines (Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria). Thameslink trains from Gatwick stop at St Pancras, for the same £10.70 off-peak fare as London Bridge, and Eurostar trains leave from the same station.

The squares go quiet early. Restaurants are thinner on the ground than in Soho, and most evenings will end with a walk or one Tube stop back from the West End. Rooms on Euston Road, the main road in front of the stations, face heavy traffic; a street or two south is calmer. For a first trip on a mid-range budget, this is the area to search first.

Shoreditch is the East London district north of Liverpool Street station, known for bars, street art and the restaurants and weekend markets around Brick Lane. It is the area to choose when the evenings matter more to you than the sights, and its room rates sit a band below the West End.

Liverpool Street is the station that makes it work. The Elizabeth line runs there from Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 in 39 minutes with no change, for £15.50, and the Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines stop there too. The Central line reaches St Paul's, Holborn and Tottenham Court Road without a change. Old Street, on the Northern line, and Shoreditch High Street, on the Windrush line of the London Overground, cover the northern side of the district.

Westminster and the South Kensington museums are a longer ride from here than from any of the other four areas, so every sightseeing day starts and ends on the Tube. Thursday to Saturday nights are loud near the bars. Light sleepers should book on a side street or look at Bloomsbury.

South Kensington is the museum district south of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum stand side by side on Cromwell Road, and both are free. The V&A opens daily from 10:00 to 17:45 and until 22:00 on Fridays, and gives a 5-minute walk from South Kensington station; the Natural History Museum opens daily from 10:00 to 17:50.

The ride from Heathrow is the shortest of the five: 40 minutes on the Piccadilly line from Terminals 2 and 3, with no change, for £5.90. South Kensington and Gloucester Road stations are also on the District and Circle lines, which run direct to Westminster and to Tower Hill for the Tower of London. The Piccadilly line goes on to Covent Garden and Russell Square.

Evenings are residential and quiet, which is what families with young children tend to want and what a group looking for bars does not. East London is a long ride away. With children, the two free museums and the parks to the north fill two days without a ticket.

Not yet. A hotel bill in London in October 2026 carries no city tax per person or per night, unlike a bill in Paris, Amsterdam or Barcelona. That is set to change, and the direction is already public.

The decision is in the government's response to the visitor levy consultation. The Mayor of London is among the leaders who will be able to use the power once the law passes, and the rate will be the mayor's to set. If you are booking far ahead, check whether the total on your reservation says it includes local taxes. Tourist taxes in Europe shows what a percentage levy looks like in Amsterdam and Edinburgh.

Heathrow has three rail links, and each ends in a different part of town. The Piccadilly line is the cheap one: £5.90 at any time of day to anywhere in zone 1, and direct to South Kensington, Covent Garden and Russell Square. The Elizabeth line is faster and stops at Paddington in 27 minutes, Tottenham Court Road in 33 and Liverpool Street in 39. The Heathrow Express runs only to Paddington, in 15 minutes.

Tube and Elizabeth line fares are in Transport for London's single fare finder, and the express fares on the Heathrow Express prices page. The express suits a Paddington hotel or a traveler in a hurry, and children aged 15 and under ride it free with a paying adult. For the five areas here, the Piccadilly or Elizabeth line gets you to the door without the extra change at Paddington.

From Gatwick, the Gatwick Express reaches Victoria in 31 minutes, and Victoria is on the District and Circle lines to South Kensington. Thameslink trains serve London Bridge and St Pancras for £10.70 pay as you go, or £19.20 on weekdays between 6:30 and 9:30, which makes Gatwick the easier airport for the South Bank and Bloomsbury. Contactless cards and Oyster cards work from Gatwick station.

London fares are capped by zone, and the caps decide how much a cheaper hotel in the suburbs saves. Pay with the same contactless card or device all day, touching in and out on the yellow readers, and the charges stop once they reach the cap for the zones you used.

The table is TfL's adult rate prices for 2026. Inside zone 1 the third Tube ride of the day already brings you to the cap, since three singles at £3.00 come to £9.00, so a busy sightseeing day costs £8.90 however many rides it has. A hotel in zone 3 raises that ceiling by £1.60 a day per adult and one in zone 4 by £3.90. The fare is a small part of the decision; the longer ride at both ends of every day is the large one.

Before you fly, check whether you need a UK ETA, compare eSIM plans so the journey planner works when you land, and choose travel insurance with theft cover. If the trip has a spare day, Oxford in one day, Bath and Windsor are all reached by train from a London base, and London to Stonehenge explains the one that needs a bus as well.