Tower Bridge

Worth clearing up first, because it is the most common confusion in London.

Tower Bridge is the Victorian bascule bridge with two Gothic towers and high walkways, built in the 1890s beside the Tower of London. It is the one in every photograph.

London Bridge is the plain concrete span half a mile upstream, with nothing to see. The nursery rhyme is about an earlier version of that bridge, not this one.

Visitors regularly travel to London Bridge station expecting the towers and find a functional road crossing.

If you want the bridge in the pictures, you want Tower Bridge, and the nearest station is Tower Hill.

Two entirely different propositions in one structure.

Walking or driving across the bridge at road level is free and always has been. You get the towers up close, the river either side, and the Tower of London on one bank. For a great many visitors that is enough.

The ticketed exhibition takes you up into the two high-level walkways between the towers, with the glass floor, and then down into the Victorian engine rooms on the south bank.

The ticket is modest by London standards and the visit is short — which is precisely why it scores well. Nobody feels short-changed by an hour that cost little.

Book online for a small saving and to skip the ticket desk.

The thing people remember, and the reason a fairly modest exhibition gets enthusiastic reviews.

Panels of glass set into the floor of the west walkway, forty-two metres above the Thames, looking straight down at the road deck and the river. When a bus passes beneath you, it passes beneath you.

Reviewers who describe themselves as uneasy with heights generally manage it — the panels are set into a solid floor with plenty of opaque surface either side, so you can walk round rather than across.

Lie down on it for the photograph everyone takes. Staff are used to it.

There is a glass floor in the east walkway too, and it is usually quieter than the west.

The half of the ticket most visitors forget is included, and several say afterwards it was their favourite part.

The original Victorian steam engines that raised the bascules are preserved in their engine house on the south bank — enormous polished machinery, coal-fired boilers, accumulators, and the coloured control wheels.

It explains how a bridge of that weight was lifted with nineteenth-century technology, which is the genuinely impressive thing about Tower Bridge.

Crucially, the engine rooms are in a separate building outside the main structure. Keep your ticket after you come down from the walkways — you need it to get in, and people do walk away without realising.

Allow twenty minutes.

There are lifts in both towers and roughly two hundred steps if you prefer.

The recurring recommendation from visitors: take the stairs at least one way. The stairwells are part of the original structure, there are information boards on the way, and you see the ironwork and the architecture that the lift skips entirely.

Lift up and stairs down is the compromise most people settle on, and it is the right one.

The lifts are small and queue at busy times.

If stairs are not an option, the lifts cover the whole route and the exhibition is genuinely accessible — see below.

The bascules still raise for river traffic, around a thousand times a year, and watching it happen is free.

Lift times are published in advance on the bridge’s own website, usually a week or more ahead. There is no fixed schedule — it depends on shipping movements.

Check before you plan your day. Timing a visit to coincide is entirely doable and turns a good hour into a memorable one.

The best vantage points are the riverbanks either side rather than the bridge itself, since the road closes and pedestrians are held back.

From the high walkways you can watch the deck open beneath you through the glass floor, which is the premium version of the experience if the timing works.

The bridge is difficult to photograph from on it, which surprises people.

The classic full-bridge shots come from the riverbanks. The north bank beside the Tower of London gives the standard postcard angle. The south bank, around Butler’s Wharf and Shad Thames where the restaurants are, gives what several reviewers consider the better composition, particularly in the evening.

From the walkways above, some of the windows open, which removes the reflections that ruin most shots taken through glass — look for them rather than shooting through a closed pane.

After dark the bridge is lit and the river reflects it, and the south bank at night is the best free photograph in this part of London.

Sunrise from the north bank gives you the towers with nobody in the frame.

An hour to ninety minutes for the full ticketed visit, including both walkways and the engine rooms.

Twenty minutes to walk across at road level for free.

That brevity is part of the appeal — it slots into a day rather than consuming one.

The obvious pairing is the Tower of London, immediately on the north bank, which is a three to four hour visit in itself. Doing both in a day is comfortable if you start early at the Tower.

St Katharine Docks on the north side and Shad Thames on the south are both good for lunch away from tourist pricing.

The visitor pattern here is flatter across the year than at any other major London attraction, because most of the visit is indoors and the rest is a bridge.

August is the busiest month, with December and February notable — the winter figures are unusually high, which reflects Christmas visitors and the fact that this works in bad weather.

April and November are the quietest.

Within the day, first thing and late afternoon are calmest. The walkways are narrow and a coach party fills them.

Evening visits are worth considering where available, for the lit city through the glass.

One of the better-value family attractions in central London.

The glass floor is the headline and it works — children lie on it, look down at the buses, and talk about it afterwards.

There is a children’s trail available at the entrance which keeps younger visitors occupied through the exhibition, and reviewers with primary-age children rate it highly.

The engine rooms hold attention better than expected: big machinery, bright colours, and things that moved.

The visit is short enough not to outlast anyone’s patience.

Pushchairs are manageable with the lifts, though the walkways are narrow when busy.

Better than a Victorian bridge suggests. Lifts serve both towers and the walkways, so the entire high-level route is reachable without steps.

The walkways themselves are level.

The engine rooms are in a separate building on the south bank, reached across the bridge at road level, and have their own access arrangements — check in advance if it matters.

Accessible toilets are available.

A free companion ticket is generally available for visitors with disabilities.

The lifts are small and busy at peak times, so an early or late visit is easier.

Tower Hill on the District and Circle lines is the nearest station, a five-minute walk on the north side. London Bridge station is a ten-minute walk on the south side.

Tower Gateway on the DLR is close, and Tower Millennium Pier gives you a river boat approach, which is the best arrival.

The exhibition entrance is in the north tower; the exit and the engine rooms are on the south bank.

The Tower of London is immediately alongside on the north bank, and the two are frequently combined.

HMS Belfast, Borough Market and the Shard are all within fifteen minutes on the south side.

This is one of the best-reviewed paid attractions in London, and the reason is expectation management: it is cheap, it is short, and it delivers more than the ticket price suggests.

The thin version: walk across at road level, photograph the towers from the middle where you cannot actually see them, and move on.

The good version: check the lift times before you plan the day, take the stairs up for the ironwork, lie on the glass floor while a bus passes underneath, find the windows that open for a clean photograph, keep your ticket for the engine rooms across the bridge, and come back after dark to see it lit from the south bank.

An hour, not much money, and the best Victorian engineering story in London.