10 Best Sights in Hampstead, London

For generations, Londoners have headed to Hampstead Heath to escape the dirt and noise of the city, and this unique 791-acre expanse of rus in urbe ("country in the city") is home to a variety of wildlife and habitat: grassy meadows, woodland, scrub, wetlands, and some of Europe's most venerable oaks. Be aware that, aside from the Parliament Hill area to the south and Golders Hill Park in the northwest, it is more like countryside than a park, with signs and amenities in short supply. Pick up a map at Kenwood House or at the "Enquiries" window of the Staff Yard near the tennis courts off Highgate Road, where you can also find details about the history of the Heath and its flora and fauna. An excellent café near the Edwardian bandstand serves Italian food.

Coming onto the Heath from the Savernake Road entrance on the southern side, walk past the children's playground and paddling pool and head uphill to the top of Parliament Hill. At 321 feet above sea level, it's one of the highest points in London, providing a stunning panorama over the city. On clear days you can see all the way to the Surrey Hills beyond the city's southern limits. Keep heading north from Parliament Hill to find the more rural parts of the Heath.

If you keep heading east from the playground instead, turn right past the Athletics Track and you'll come to the Lido, an Olympic-size, outdoor, unheated swimming pool that gets packed on rare hot summer days. More swimming options are available at the Hampstead ponds, which have been refreshing Londoners for generations. You'll find the "Mens" and "Ladies" ponds to the northeast of Parliament Hill, with a “Mixed” pond closer to South End Green. A £2 donation is requested. Golders Hill Park, on the Heath Extension to the northwest, offers a good café, tennis courts, a duck pond, a croquet lawn, and a walled flower garden, plus a Butterfly House (May–September) and a small zoo with native species including muntjac deer, rare red squirrels, and a Scottish wildcat.

Highgate is not the oldest cemetery in London, but it is probably the best known, both for its roster of famous "inhabitants" and the quality of its funerary architecture. After it was consecrated in 1839, Victorians came from miles around to appreciate the ornate headstones, the impressive tombs, and the view. At its summit is the Circle of Lebanon, a ring of vaults built around an ancient cypress tree, a legacy of the 17th-century gardens that formerly occupied the site. Leading from the circle is the Egyptian Avenue, a subterranean stone tunnel lined with catacombs, itself approached by a dramatic colonnade that screens the main cemetery from the road. Such was its popularity that 19 acres on the other side of the road were acquired in 1850, and this additional East Cemetery is the final resting place of numerous notables including Karl Marx (the site's most visited) as well as George Eliot and, a more recent internment, George Michael. Both sides are impressive, with a grand (locked) iron gate leading to a sweeping courtyard built for the approach of horses and carriages.

By the 1970s the cemetery had become unkempt and neglected until a group of volunteers, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, undertook the huge upkeep. Tours are conducted by the Friends, who will show you the most interesting graves among the numerous statues and memorials once hidden by overgrowth. The tours of the West and East sides are 75 minutes each. Alternatively, you can go on a self-guided ramble, but admission to the catacombs is by guided tour only. There is a reduced price for East side only admission. You're expected to dress respectfully, so skip the shorts and the baseball cap; children under eight are not admitted and neither are dogs, tripods, or video cameras.

It was while lodging in this house between 1818 and 1820 that the leading Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) fell in love with girl-next-door Fanny Brawne and wrote some of his best-loved poems. (Soon after, ill health forced him to move to Rome, where he died the following year.) After a major refurbishment to make the rooms more in keeping with their original Regency decor, the house, now a museum devoted to the poet's life and work, displays all sorts of Keats-related material, including portraits, letters, many of the poet's original manuscripts and books, the engagement ring he gave to Fanny, and items of her clothing. A pretty garden contains the plum tree under which Keats reputedly composed Ode to a Nightingale. There are frequent Keats-themed events, including evening poetry readings, concerts, and special talks featuring local literary luminaries (an adjoining building houses a community-operated library). Picnics can be taken onto the grounds during the summer; during the spring and summer, the house organizes monthly Keats in Hampstead guided walks (150 minutes, £10).

This largely Palladian villa offers an escape to a gracious country house with a magnificent collection of old master paintings and beautiful grounds, all a short Tube ride from central London. Originally built in 1616, Kenwood was expanded by Robert Adam starting in 1767 and later by George Saunders in 1795. Adam refaced most of the exterior and added the splendid library, which, with its vaulted ceiling and Corinthian columns, is the highlight of the house's interior. A major renovation restored four rooms to reflect Adam's intentions as closely as possible, incorporating the furniture he designed specifically for the space and his original color schemes.

Kenwood is also home to the Iveagh Bequest, a world-class collection of some 60 paintings that includes masterworks like Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Two Circles and Vermeer's The Guitar Player, along with major works by Reynolds, van Dyck, Hals, Gainsborough, Turner, and more. Knowledgeable room guides are present to answer any questions on the rooms and the works inside. The 112 acres of grounds, designed by Humphry Repton and bordered by the less manicured Heath, are equally elegant and serene, with lawns sloping down to a little lake crossed by a trompe-l'oeil bridge. All in all, it's the perfect retreat for an 18th-century gentleman. In summer, the grounds host a series of family-oriented events, including an Easter Egg hunt. The Brew House café, occupying part of the old coach house, has outdoor tables in the courtyard and a terraced garden.

Among the many artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution who settled in the area was noted architect Ernö Goldfinger, who built this outstanding and influential modernist home opposite Hampstead Heath in 1939 as his family residence. (His plans drew the ire of several local residents, including novelist Ian Fleming, who supposedly got his revenge by naming the Bond villain after his neighbor.) Along with design touches and building techniques that were groundbreaking at the time, the unique house, a place of pilgrimage for 20th-century architecture enthusiasts, also contains Goldfinger's impressive collection of modern art and self-designed innovative furniture. Admission between 11 am and 2 pm is by hourly guided tour or you can embark on a self-guided tour at 3, 3:20, or 3:40. All must be booked in advance.

One of Hampstead's oldest buildings, Burgh House was built in 1704 to take advantage of the natural spa waters of the then-fashionable Hampstead Wells. A private house until World War II, it was saved from dereliction in the 1970s by local residents, who have maintained it ever since. The building is a fine example of the genteel elegance typical of the Queen Anne period, with brick frontage, oak-paneled rooms, and a terraced garden that was originally designed by Gertrude Jekyll. Today the house contains a small but diverting collection of objects, paintings, textiles, and furniture related to the history of the house and the surrounding area, and also hosts regular talks, concerts, and recitals (and weddings). The secluded garden courtyard of the café is a lovely spot for lunch, tea, or a glass of wine on a summer's afternoon.

This community-oriented gallery, with a mandate to help new audiences engage with art and the people who make it, has become one of the city's most highly regarded exhibition spaces. Since 1965, it has nurtured and given early exposure to important artists including Martin Creed, Sophie Calle, and Yinka Shonibare, and continuing its support for emerging talent by hosting the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition that features 55 of the most exciting emerging artists from art schools in the United Kingdom.

A café serves organic breakfasts, light lunches, and small plates of Italian-inspired food (plus wine, beer, and cocktails in the afternoon), with outdoor seating in the lovely garden, weather permitting. There's also a bookshop selling books by and about artists.

This handsome 17th-century merchant's home, Hampstead's oldest surviving house, has fine collections of ceramics, early keyboard instruments, and 17th-century needlework. The 2-acre walled garden, with its rose plantings and 32 varieties of apples and pears in the orchard, has remained virtually unchanged for 300 years and is a delightful refuge from the surrounding urban roar. Booking tickets in advance for a visit to the house is required as entry is by timed ticket only; you can stop by and visit the garden without booking in advance.

The father of psychoanalysis lived here with his family for the last year of his life after his 1938 escape from Nazi persecution in his native Vienna. His daughter Anna (herself a pioneer of child psychoanalysis) remained in the house until her own death in 1982, bequeathing it as a museum to honor her father's life and work. The centerpiece is Freud's unchanged study, which houses his remarkable collection of antiquities and his library. Also on display is the family's Biedermeier furniture—including, of course, the famous couch. As well, there are lectures, study groups, and theme exhibitions, in addition to a psychoanalysis-related archive and research library. Looking for a unique souvenir? The gift shop here sells "Freudian Slippers" with an image of the Freud's face. Admission is by prebooked time slot only.

A church has been here since 1312, but the current building—consecrated in 1747 and later extended in 1877—is a fine example of neoclassical serenity, enhanced by Ionic columns and vaulting arches. Also known as the Hampstead Parish Church, it stands at the end of Church Row, a narrow street lined with flat-fronted brick Georgian houses that gives you a sense of what Hampstead was like when it truly was a rural village as opposed to a traffic-clogged north London neighborhood. Many local notables are buried in the picturesque churchyard, including painter John Constable (some of whose most famous works depict the Heath), John Harrison (the inventor of the marine chronometer at the heart of the book Longitude), members of the artistic du Maurier family, Jane Austen's aunt, and British comedy god Peter Cook.