Regent's Park

Regent's Park was the centrepiece of architect John Nash's early 19th-century masterplan for the Prince Regent, later King George IV, who envisioned a garden city of elegant villas and terraces just north of central London. Most of the villas were never built, but Nash's sweeping crescents of cream stucco terraces still ring the park's edges today, and they remain among the finest surviving examples of Regency architecture anywhere in the country.

Inside the park's Inner Circle, Queen Mary's Gardens were laid out in the 1930s and now hold the largest collection of roses in London, tens of thousands of blooms that fill the air with scent through the summer months. To the north, London Zoo opened in 1828 as the world's first scientific zoological collection, founded by the Zoological Society of London specifically for the study of animals rather than as a royal menagerie for entertainment — a distinction that made it, in its day, a genuinely new kind of institution.

Before Nash got hold of it, the land was known as Marylebone Park, a former royal hunting ground that had reverted to farmland by the 18th century. Nash's Regency development transformed it back into royal parkland, and to this day the park remains part of the Crown Estate rather than a municipal park owned by the city — a quiet reminder of its origins that most visitors never notice.

Regent's Canal traces the park's northern boundary, built in the same era as Nash's terraces to carry goods by barge between the industrial districts of west London and the docks. Its towpath is now one of the most pleasant walking and cycling routes in the city, leading directly toward the markets and canalside bars of Camden.

Entry to Regent's Park is free and it's open from early morning until dusk year-round. In summer, the park hosts an open-air theatre with a season of Shakespeare and other productions under the sky, and rowing boats can be hired on the lake — both popular ways to spend a warm afternoon here.

The wide open lawns make it an easy spot for a picnic, and the park works particularly well paired with a walk along the Regent's Canal towpath toward Camden Market, roughly 30 to 40 minutes on foot from the park's northern edge.