If you want a view from the Shard for the price of a cocktail, find your way up to the 31st floor and into this gorgeous three-storey bar and restaurant. The lofty ceiling adds awe to the London panoramas shining through the high sloping glass walls. Only the restaurant takes bookings, so expect a wait if you come at peak drinking hours.
Aqua Shard
South Bank
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
22.41 MILES
The world’s largest and oldest continuously occupied fortress, Windsor Castle is a majestic vision of battlements and towers. Used for state occasions, it…
1.79 MILES
A splendid mixture of architectural styles, Westminster Abbey is considered the finest example of Early English Gothic. It's not merely a beautiful place…
0.61 MILES
One of London's most amazing attractions, Tate Modern is an outstanding modern- and contemporary-art gallery housed in the creatively revamped Bankside…
3.92 MILES
With its thunderous, animatronic dinosaur, riveting displays about planet earth, outstanding Darwin Centre and architecture straight from a Gothic fairy…
0.84 MILES
Sir Christopher Wren’s 300-year-old architectural masterpiece is a London icon. Towering over diminutive Ludgate Hill in a superb position that's been a…
0.52 MILES
Few parts of the UK are as steeped in history or as impregnated with legend and superstition as the titanic stonework of the Tower of London. Not only is…
0.54 MILES
Seeing a play at Shakespeare's Globe – ideally standing under the open-air "wooden O" – is experiencing the playwright's work at its best and most…
2.02 MILES
With almost six million visitors trooping through its doors annually, the British Museum in Bloomsbury, one of the oldest and finest museums in the world,…
Nearby South Bank attractions
0.03 MILES
Puncturing the skies above London, the dramatic splinter-like form of the Shard has become an icon of the city and is one of the tallest buildings in…
2. Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret
0.09 MILES
This unique museum, 32 steps up a spiral stairway in the tower of St Thomas Church (1703), is the unlikely home of Britain's oldest surviving operating…
0.17 MILES
For a thousand years, a market has existed at the southern end of London Bridge, making this still-busy ancient gathering point a superb spectacle…
0.17 MILES
This beautiful shopping arcade was an enclosed dock in the 19th century. The wharf handled all sorts of goods, although perishable foodstuff was the main…
5. London Bridge Experience & London Tombs
0.17 MILES
In the vaults beneath London Bridge, this historical if somewhat tacky attraction takes you on a whistle-stop tour of London’s dark past. Things ratchet…
0.18 MILES
Buried between soaring blocks of flats, this tiny alley has been transformed by locals into a secret garden lined with potted plants. A small wooden…
0.19 MILES
Southwark Cathedral, a mostly Victorian construction but with a history dating back many centuries earlier, was the nearest church to what was once the…
0.25 MILES
Step aboard this replica of privateer Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the warship that circumnavigated the globe in 1577–1580. Kids will love exploring…