Parliament of London

The Houses of Parliament, London

The building you see on the London skyline along the Thames was designed in the 1840s by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin after a fire destroyed most of the medieval palace in 1834. What replaced it was Gothic Revival on a monumental scale: the long riverside facade, the Victoria Tower at the south end, and Elizabeth Tower at the north containing Big Ben – technically “Big Ben” is the 13.5-tonne bell, not the tower – which has been ticking since 1859. It is a working parliament, which changes what you can actually access and requires planning accordingly.

Visiting

Guided tours run on Saturdays year-round and on weekdays during parliamentary recess (roughly late July through early September, plus Christmas and Easter breaks). These take you through the Robing Room, Royal Gallery, Lords Chamber, and Commons Chamber. Adult tickets are around £29.50. The content is genuinely interesting: the asymmetry between the Lords Chamber (richly decorated in red and gold) and the Commons Chamber (comparatively plain green benches) reflects centuries of constitutional tension between the two houses. Most people don’t know the Commons was actually destroyed by German bombing in 1941 and rebuilt in the 1950s.

When Parliament is sitting, you can watch debates from the public galleries without a ticket – queue on the day at the entrance on St Margaret Street for the Commons, or the south side entrance for the Lords. Prime Minister’s Questions runs Wednesday 12:00-12:30 when Parliament is in session. It is reliably loud, often theatrical, and occasionally revealing. The queue forms by 07:00 for it. Ordinary debates are quieter and easier to get into, and can be interesting if the subject matters to you.

Elizabeth Tower

UK residents can arrange to visit Elizabeth Tower through their MP – numbers are limited and it fills well in advance. For overseas visitors there is a separate application process but availability is extremely limited. The honest advice: see it from Westminster Bridge, Lambeth Bridge, or across from the South Bank, where the views are better than any angle you get from inside the cordon.

Parliament Square

The square in front of the Palace is ringed with statues of British and world leaders including Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. It is a public space and free to walk around. The Embankment footpath along the north bank of the Thames gives the best riverside views of the full palace facade.

Nearby

Westminster Abbey is directly adjacent – the site of every coronation since 1066, and of more royal burials and weddings than anywhere else in England. Entry is around £29. The Churchill War Rooms, five minutes south toward St James’s Park, are the underground Cabinet rooms from which Churchill directed the Second World War. They were sealed in 1945 and reopened virtually unchanged. Both the Abbey and the War Rooms reward full visits rather than quick passes.

Where to Eat

The Red Lion on Parliament Street has a division bell connection – MPs could drink there and return in time for a vote when the bell rings. It is a standard Central London pub with a decent lunch trade and an obvious location to talk about what you’ve just seen. The Cinnamon Club in the Old Westminster Library building, a five-minute walk north, serves upscale modern Indian food and is one of the better restaurants in the Westminster area.

Getting There

Westminster tube station (Circle, District, and Jubilee lines) is immediately adjacent. It is also walkable from Waterloo Station on the South Bank side via Westminster Bridge.