South Bank Walking Tour: London's Escape From Its Own Rules

London's South Bank has long been the city's playground, sitting outside the strict laws of the City of London. On this walking tour, you'll trace the area's rowdy history, from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to today's skate parks, once free from official control.

The tour starts at the Southwark Gateway needle, a stone spike marking the alignment of the medieval London Bridge. You'll wander through Borough Market, London's oldest food market, past Southwark Cathedral and the Golden Hind replica ship, then along Bankside, once notorious for brothels and bear-baiting, to the reconstructed Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's plays first thrilled Elizabethan audiences.

You'll pass the Clink Prison Museum, built on the site of a medieval jail that gave English its slang for incarceration, and Tate Modern, a former power station turned world-class art gallery. Further along, you'll discover Jubilee Gardens, the London Eye, and Waterloo Bridge's darker secrets, including a Cold War assassination by poisoned umbrella. The tour ends beneath Big Ben, London's most photographed landmark.

On this 90-minute walking tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Explore the ruins of Winchester Palace, once home to the powerful Bishops of Winchester for over 500 years
• Learn how The Anchor pub hid fugitives from the nearby Clink Prison in its old cubby holes
• Discover how Doggett's Coat and Badge pub commemorates Britain's oldest annually contested sporting race
• See the OXO Tower's stained-glass letters, a clever trick to dodge 1920s neon advertising laws
• Wander through Gabriel's Wharf and the Bernie Spain Gardens, saved from development by local campaigners in the 1980s
• Hear how the Royal Festival Hall became Britain's first post-war building awarded Grade I listed status
• Discover the South Bank Lion, a rare surviving example of nineteenth-century artificial Coade stone

From medieval prisons to modern masterpieces, this walk uncovers the South Bank's unruly, unforgettable character. Lace up your shoes and see where London went to misbehave.