Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden

The lowdown

Christopher Wren built a church here after the Great Fire, and the Blitz gutted it in 1940. Rather than rebuild, the City turned the roofless ruin into a garden, and the result is one of the most romantic free spaces in central London, climbing roses and box hedges laid out where the pews once stood, with the surviving tower standing over it all.

Wooden towers stand in for the long-gone columns, and trellises trace the lines of the vanished nave, so you wander what is effectively the ghost of a church planted with flowers. It sits a stone's throw from St Paul's yet hardly anyone stops, which is exactly why it is worth seeking out.