The smell of fresh bread and aged cheese mingles with the damp Thames air as you step out of London Bridge station, and the view that unfolds before you is a timeline of London’s history compressed into a single glance: the medieval tower of Southwark Cathedral, the glass shard of The Shard piercing the sky, and Borough Market’s bustling Victorian arches all visible at once. Southwark is not just a neighbourhood. It is a thousand years of London life packed into one square mile.
In This Article
Borough Market: A Feast for Every Sense
Borough Market has been trading on this site since at least 1014, which makes it one of the oldest markets in London. The current buildings date from the 1850s, and the iron-and-glass roof creates a cathedral-like space for the city’s best food. The raclette stall has a queue that snakes around the corner, the cheese shop sells Stichelton and Montgomery Cheddar, and the Bread Ahead doughnuts are legendary. The market is busiest from Thursday to Saturday, when every stall is open and the crowds are at their thickest. Arrive before 10 am to beat the rush. Bring cash for the smaller stalls. And come hungry.
The Clink Prison and the Origins of a Word
Clink Street runs alongside the river, a narrow lane that gives its name to the Clink Prison, which operated from 1144 to 1780. The word “clink” entered the English language as slang for any prison because this one was so notorious. The conditions were appalling. Prisoners were held in unheated rooms, fed only if their families could pay, and chained to the walls. The museum on the site gives a vivid sense of what medieval justice looked like. It is not a comfortable visit, but it is an honest one. The Clink stood on the same spot for over six hundred years, and its legacy lives on in every British police drama where someone threatens to end up in the clink.
Shakespeare’s Globe: Theatre Under the Sky
The reconstructed Globe Theatre on Bankside is the closest you will get to experiencing Shakespeare as his original audiences did. The building is a replica of the 1599 original, built from the same materials and using the same construction techniques. The yard, where the groundlings stand for five pounds, is open to the sky. Rain stops the show. The audience is close enough to see the actors sweat. The performances are energetic, inventive, and sometimes chaotic. The season runs from April to October. Winter performances move to the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a candlelit theatre next door. The tour of the Globe during the day is excellent, but the real magic happens when the lights go down and the actors step onto the stage.
Tate Modern: The Turbine Hall and Beyond
The Tate Modern occupies the former Bankside Power Station, a monumental brick building whose cavernous Turbine Hall has hosted some of the most memorable art installations of the twenty-first century. The permanent collection is free and spans modern art from 1900 to the present. The Rothko Room, a dedicated space for Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals, is a place of almost religious stillness. The viewing level on the tenth floor of the Blavatnik Building offers one of the best free views of the London skyline. The Tate Modern receives over five million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited art museums in the world. It is also one of the most accessible. You can spend an hour or a day, and you will not run out of things to see.
The Golden Hinde and the River Walk
Moored in St Mary Overie Dock, just steps from the cathedral, the Golden Hinde is a full-scale replica of the galleon in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580. The original ship returned to England with a cargo of spices and treasure that made Drake the richest privateer in Elizabethan England. The replica has sailed over 140,000 miles, more than any other replica ship in the world. You can tour the decks, explore the cramped quarters where the crew slept, and imagine what it was like to spend three years at sea in a wooden ship. The river walk itself, from London Bridge to Tower Bridge along the Thames Path, is one of the best walks in London. It takes about twenty minutes and passes all of Southwark’s landmarks in sequence.
What would you visit first in Southwark: the market, the galleries, the theatre, or the prison?
Published in: United Kingdom. Updated June 11 2026.
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