The 11 Most Iconic Destinations in England

London's most recognisable river crossing, a pair of neo-Gothic towers linked by a pale blue lattice and a glass-floored high walkway.

The bascules still lift around 800 times a year for tall ships, and the best views come from the south bank looking north.

Inside, the Victorian engine rooms hold the original steam machinery that raised the road.

A row of 17th-century weavers' cottages called Arlington Row, built from honey-coloured Cotswold stone, forms one of the most famous streets in England.

A shallow trout stream runs directly alongside the row, with ducks and grazing sheep completing a scene that looks almost too tidy to be real.

William Morris once called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and the description has stuck ever since.

Wren's domed cathedral, built after the Great Fire and the defining image of London's survival through the Blitz.

Inside, the Whispering Gallery carries a murmur clean around the dome; above it, 528 steps lead to the Golden Gallery and a view straight down Fleet Street and across the Thames.

The world's oldest and largest continuously occupied castle, still an official residence of the British monarch, with nearly a thousand years of continuous history inside its walls.

State Apartments, St George's Chapel (site of several royal weddings), and the daily Changing of the Guard draw huge crowds year-round.

It sits an easy day trip from London, which keeps it firmly on the well-worn royal-sightseeing circuit.

Europe's largest street festival takes over west London every August bank holiday, born from Notting Hill's Caribbean community in the 1960s and now drawing over a million people to watch steel bands, soca floats and dancers in feathered, sequinned costumes wind through the neighbourhood's terraced streets, sound systems blasting reggae and dancehall late into the evening.

Held on Michael Eavis's dairy farm in Somerset since 1970, Glastonbury has grown into the world's largest greenfield music festival, with the Pyramid Stage as its centrepiece against rolling farmland and, notoriously, frequent mud.

The site sprawls into stone circles, dance fields and art installations, turning the farm into a temporary city of nearly 200,000 for five days.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, built in several phases between 3000 and 1500 BC by Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples whose precise intentions remain a mystery.

The arrangement of massive sarsen stones and smaller bluestones transported from Wales creates a monument of enduring wonder.

The monarch's London residence, a 775-room block behind the gilded Victoria Memorial gates where the Changing of the Guard draws a crush most mornings.

The State Rooms open for ten weeks each summer, when visitors can walk the Throne Room and the Picture Gallery.

For the rest of the year the railings are as close as anyone gets.

Camden's sprawling network of markets grew from a single lock-side crafts market in 1974 into one of London's most-visited attractions, a warren of stalls, food vendors and independent shops across the canalside Stables Market and Camden Lock.

Its identity has always leaned alternative - punk memorabilia, gothic fashion, tattoo studios - and the surrounding streets carry a live-music history running from punk through Britpop to Amy Winehouse.

Big Ben is the great bell inside the Elizabeth Tower, the Gothic Revival clock tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster.

Completed in 1859 and fully restored by 2022, its four illuminated dials and hourly chimes are the sound and silhouette most associated with London.

From outside it is a ten-minute stop; the interior tour climbs 334 steps and is open to UK residents only, by MP nomination.

London packs two thousand years into one city: fragments of Roman wall, a Norman fortress, Georgian squares and glass towers all within a few Tube stops of each other.

Its national museums are among the best in the world and free to enter, while the parks, markets and riverside walks give the place room to breathe between landmarks.

The weather is unreliable and the prices are not, but the range of things to do is close to unmatched.