Bloomsbury London: Why This Neighbourhood is for Smart Travellers

If you’re planning a London trip for the first time, Bloomsbury could be one of the smartest places to stay.

It’s central, quiet and walkable to many things to do in London. It’s also where you’ll find some of London’s best museums, including the British Museum.

I know Bloomsbury really well because it was the first London neighbourhood where I lived. It was also where the NBC News London Bureau was located, which is where I met Mr Sunny, who was a cameraman there.

So when I recommend Bloomsbury to visitors, I’m not simply looking at a map. I’ve spent a lot of time here, both personally and professionally.

In my trip consultations and my London Travel Guides, I have a particular type of traveller in mind. It’s the person who wants a London trip to feel easy, low-key and high quality. For me, that makes location one of the most important decisions you can make.

And Bloomsbury ticks that box in so many ways.

Why Bloomsbury is for Smart Travellers
The British Museum
Don’t Stop at This Museum
Bloomsbury London Hidden Gems
Bloomsbury vs South Kensington
Hotels in London
One Reason I Wouldn’t Choose Bloomsbury
Is Bloomsbury Worth Visiting
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Why Bloomsbury Is for Smart Travellers

Foremost, if you’re looking for a smart location, Bloomsbury is exceptionally walkable to many London attractions.

I learned this when I first moved here during the pre-Google maps days, when I had to rely on instinct and an A-Z map. (IYKYK!) As a university student, I wanted to save money for pubs and clubs, and not travel on the London the Underground.

Living on Great Russell Street (next to the British Museum), I was able to quickly get to Covent Garden, the West End and Holborn. Being close to King’s Cross and St Pancras also meant jumping on the Eurostar for a continental getaway easily. Several Underground stations nearby make it simple to get further across London when walking isn’t the best option.

That matters more than you might realise when you’re visiting London for the first time. You don’t want every sightseeing day to involve figuring out how to get from one side of the town to another.

Staying somewhere central and then being able to walk between several experiences will make your trip feel much easier- and therefore smarter.

Bloomsbury is also a good choice if you like the idea of mixing major attractions with smaller, less obvious experiences too. And there are plenty of free things to do here. The most obvious is the British Museum, whose permanent collection is free to enter.

That combination of location, culture and value is a big part of why I think Bloomsbury is such a smart London base.

I’ve put all of the places I’m recommending in this article on my Bloomsbury Google Map, so you can see how close many of them are to one another. My Restaurant Guide is full of maps like this too. They’re by area, cuisine and our favourites.

The British Museum is a Reason to Visit Bloomsbury

If you love history, the British Museum is absolutely worth putting on your London itinerary.

But I don’t recommend treating it as a quick stop simply because it’s free.

My core philosophy for trip consultation clients and travel guides is to start your day out in London with an anchor attraction. The British Museum is one of them.

Because of the way visitor traffic moves through Central London during the day, starting with an anchor attraction will help you avoid some of the biggest crowds and then move on to something else afterwards.

If you love history, you could easily make the British Museum the focus of your entire day. There is more than enough here to keep you occupied.

But, if you’re like me and more interested in pop culture, shopping and food, you might just want to see the highlights before continuing with your sightseeing.

If you’re not sure how much time you want to give the museum, I have one very specific piece of advice:

Start with the Rosetta Stone.

It’s one of the British Museum’s most famous objects, so see it first. Then you can decide whether you want to stay and explore or continue with the rest of your day.

That’s the beauty of starting here. If you become fascinated by the collections, you can easily spend hours getting lost among them. If you don’t, you’ve seen one of the museum’s most important highlights and can move on to one of Bloomsbury’s smaller museums or head to Covent Garden to shop ‘til you drop!

Sunny’s London Tip

Take advantage of the British Museum’s free admission to give your London itinerary flexibility.

If history is your thing, make it an anchor London attraction and give yourself plenty of time. If it’s not, see the Rosetta Stone, explore a few highlights and move on.

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Don’t Stop at the British Museum

The British Museum is the obvious attraction in Bloomsbury.

There are several smaller museums here that tell much more specific stories about London.

The Charles Dickens Museum is in the house where Dickens lived with his family at 48 Doughty Street. If you’re interested in Victorian London or literature, it’s a very different experience from walking through a huge national museum.

The Foundling Museum explores the history of the Foundling Hospital and more than 275 years of London’s social history.

You can spend hours surrounded by objects from civilisations around the world at the British Museum, then visit a much smaller museum focused on one person, one institution or one particular piece of London’s history.

And that’s one reason Bloomsbury works well for people planning their first London trip. You don’t have to choose between seeing the famous London attractions and discovering something less expected.

You can do both.

Bloomsbury’s Hidden Gems

Once you’ve seen the big attraction, you can start looking for the experiences that make your London trip feel less touristy.

One of my favourites is the Sir John Soane Museum.

Soane was an architect and the museum occupies his former home, which has been preserved much as it was when he died in 1837. It’s filled with art, architecture and an extraordinary collection of objects, but the house itself is what makes the experience so unusual.

And it’s free.

I best summarise it during trip consultations by saying, ‘I couldn’t actually believe what I was seeing when I went and truly wish I had given myself more time to be there.’

Then there’s Outernet, near Tottenham Court Road.

This is a completely different experience. Instead of Victorian history and architectural collections, you’ll find enormous immersive digital displays.

I like including places to visit in London like this because they give you flexibility on a London itinerary. It’s free and is great to pop in to based on how much time you have and how you feel in the moment.

I’ve added it to people’s list of things to do before they meet up with a walking tour, before the theatre or a hidden gem add-on.

Bloomsbury vs South Kensington: Which Is Better for Your London Trip?

If you’ve been researching London’s museums, you may also be considering South Kensington.

It’s an excellent choice, particularly if your priority is visiting major museums. The Natural History Museum, Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum are all within a relatively small area and many of their permanent collections are free. Plus, it’s a quiet and affluent area too.

So which should you choose?

Choose South Kensington if you want your sightseeing to centre around London’s major museums. Choose Bloomsbury if you want museums plus more of central London within easy walking distance.

That’s the distinction I’d make for someone visiting London for the first time.

Bloomsbury Hotels

One Thing I Wouldn’t Choose Bloomsbury For

Food.

That’s not to say you can’t eat well in Bloomsbury. You can.

But if you’re choosing a London neighbourhood specifically because you want an exceptional restaurant scene, this wouldn’t be my first choice.

What I do think is useful is knowing where to eat near the London attractions you’re already visiting.

That’s one of the reasons I created my London Restaurant Guide. It includes recommendations for where to eat near major London attractions, as well as other sections designed to make choosing restaurants during your trip much easier.

Get the Guide

Worried about where to eat in London?

You just don’t know where to go.

With this London Restaurant Guide you’ll have all of this in one place:

Places to eat near top attractions
Restaurants by neighbourhood
2 top afternoon tea suggestions by attractions
Restaurants organised by Cuisines (Best British, Asian, Indian, Italian & Greek)
Essential lists (afternoon teas, Sunday roasts, pubs for food, food markets & more)
Clickable Google maps to plan ahead

So, in it you’ll find a list of places to eat near the British Museum to help you with your ‘during the day’ planning. But, at night I’d recommend using the Soho or Covent Garden neighbourhood lists and maps.

Oh- and I do include at least two excellent afternoon tea recommendations near the British Museum. Since so many people inquire about where to go, and London has so many options, I can easily suggest excellent, hand-picked ones in Bloomsbury.

Is Bloomsbury Worth Visiting?

For a first London trip, I think Bloomsbury is one of those neighbourhoods that makes more sense the more you understand how London works.

You get the British Museum and smaller museums. You get quiet streets and excellent transport. You get major London attractions within walking distance and plenty of free things to do.

And you can stay somewhere central without feeling as though you’ve booked yourself into the middle of London’s tourist traffic. That’s why I call Bloomsbury a neighbourhood for smart travellers.

The hard part isn’t finding things to do in London. It’s working out which ones belong together, where you should stay and how to make the most of the days you have. That’s what I help visitors figure out.

If you want to plan your own trip, my London Travel Guide gives you the framework I use to make those decisions, plus tons of sample itineraries beyond a classic 3 day London itinerary.

If you’d rather have someone put it together for you, my 1:1 London Trip Consultations give you personalised advice and a tailored London itinerary based on what you actually want to experience.