The Best East London Attractions & Activities

Dennis Severs’ House is an immersive time-capsule experience. The 18th-century house is staged as if its former Huguenot silk-weaving residents had just left, with rooms evoking sights, sounds and scents of Georgian to Victorian London life.

Set in a 200-year-old warehouse, the Museum of London Docklands traces the city’s maritime past. Explore galleries on trade, slavery, and the Thames, plus a recreated Victorian street. Family-friendly with free entry, it’s a hidden gem by Canary Wharf.

The Museum of the Home in East London explores how homes and domestic life have changed over the centuries. Its period room displays, gardens and exhibitions reveal stories of everyday living, design and culture from the 1600s to the present day.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, built for the 2012 Games, is now a vast green space with wetlands, playgrounds, and public art. Visitors can enjoy sporting venues, cycle paths, waterways, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit with its striking views and slide.

V\&A East Storehouse in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is a vast collection hub where visitors can explore behind the scenes. It offers access to over 250,000 objects, conservation labs, and immersive displays connecting art, design, and history

Columbia Road in East London is famed for its vibrant Sunday flower market. Lined with Victorian shops, cafés and galleries, the street bursts with colour and fragrance, offering plants, flowers and local charm in a lively, historic setting.

Trinity Buoy Wharf in London’s Docklands blends maritime heritage with creativity. Once a site for lighthouse manufacturing, it is home to London’s only lighthouse. Today its preserved industrial buildings house studios, galleries and cultural projects.

Valence House Museum in Dagenham is a local history museum, set in a medieval manor house. Its displays explore Barking and Dagenham’s past through archaeology, industry and domestic life, with gardens and a surviving moat adding historic character.

Whitechapel Gallery is a leading contemporary art space, renowned for groundbreaking exhibitions since 1901. It showcases modern and contemporary art, hosts talks and events, and supports emerging and established artists from around the world.