7 London Sights to Look Out For During Your Airport Transfer

Best spotted from: Heathrow and West London routes

You’ll see it long before you’re anywhere near it. At 133 meters tall, the Wembley arch is visible from miles across northwest London, curving above the rooftops like it belongs there.

What’s easy to forget is that it wasn’t purely decorative. The arch acts as a structural support for the retractable roof and holds the entire northern stand in place, taking the load that would otherwise need dozens of internal pillars. It was the longest single-span roof structure in the world when it was completed in 2007.

The old Wembley had its twin towers, which were demolished in 2002. The arch replaced them with something that was, by design, impossible to mistake for anywhere else.

Best spotted from: Gatwick and south London routes

Nothing else in London looks like Battersea. Four white chimneys, a brick facade the colour of old terracotta, and a silhouette that’s appeared on everything from a Pink Floyd album to a James Bond film. If you’re arriving from Gatwick or anywhere south of the river, you’ll likely pass close enough to take in the full scale of it.

The building ran as a coal-fired power station from 1933 until 1983, at one point generating electricity for roughly a fifth of London. It sat derelict for nearly four decades before reopening in 2022 as one of the city’s most ambitious regeneration projects, with apartments, offices and restaurants housed inside the original Grade II listed shell. Those four chimneys aren’t functional. They’re just iconic.

Best spotted from: City Airport, Gatwick and central London routes

At 310 metres, The Shard is the tallest building in the UK, and it tends to appear suddenly. One moment you’re moving through south or east London’s lower rooftops, and then it’s just there, above everything, catching the light differently depending on the time of day.

The Italian architect Renzo Piano is said to have sketched the original concept on a napkin during a lunch meeting. Whether that’s true or apocryphal, the result is a building that’s polarised opinion since it opened in 2012, but it’s hard to argue with the visibility. On a clear day, The Shard can be seen from 40 miles away. At night it lights up and changes with the season.

Best spotted from: Almost any route into central London

There’s a moment on almost any central London airport transfer where you cross the river, and it’s always worth looking up for it.

Depending on which bridge you’re on, you could be looking at the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben to one side with the Tate Modern behind you. Or Tower Bridge to the east and London Bridge to the west. Or Chelsea and Battersea facing each other across the water.

The Thames reframes the city around it every time, and seeing it from a bridge, even briefly, is one of those London moments that never quite wears off. It’s easy to forget the river is 215 miles long and runs through ten counties before it reaches central London.

Best spotted from: Stansted, City Airport and east London routes

Coming in from the east, you might catch sight of the O2 on the Greenwich Peninsula: a vast white dome, 365 metres across, ringed by 12 yellow support masts each standing 100 metres tall. The diameter is one metre for every day of the year. Whether that was a deliberate design choice or a happy coincidence depends on which source you believe.

It was built as the Millennium Dome for the year 2000 celebrations, repurposed and rebranded in 2007, and now ranks as one of the most visited entertainment venues in the world. It’s also possible to walk across the top of it, strapped in with a guide, on what’s billed as the highest vantage point in London with a view of the city.

Best spotted from: Stansted, City Airport and east London routes

The towers at Canary Wharf tend to announce themselves gradually. One Canada Square appears first, then the cluster fills in around it as you get closer: the HSBC and Barclays headquarters, the curved glass of the newer Wood Wharf buildings, cranes still adding to the skyline as the development keeps expanding.

What’s easy to forget is how recent all of it is. Thirty years ago this was derelict dockland, the former heart of London’s working port. The transformation into a financial district began in the late 1980s. Seen at night from the water or from an elevated approach road, the towers reflected in the docks make for one of the most striking skylines London has.

Best spotted from: Central London routes

Most transfers into central London pass near the edge of Hyde Park at some point, and it’s worth paying attention when they do. All 350 acres of it, right in the middle of one of the world’s most expensive cities, and it costs nothing to enter.

The park has been a public space since 1637, when Charles I opened it to the people of London. Since then it’s hosted the Great Exhibition of 1851, Live Aid in 1985, and Rolling Stones concerts that reportedly attracted 500,000 people. There are rowing boats on the Serpentine, wild ring-necked parakeets in the trees, and Speakers’ Corner near the Marble Arch end, where anyone can stand up and say almost anything they like. From a car window it looks peaceful. In practice it’s one of the busiest patches of grass in Europe.