Crystal Palace Park Ruins

The lowdown

The Crystal Palace was the vast glass-and-iron hall built for the 1851 Great Exhibition, moved here to Sydenham Hill and then lost forever when it burned to the ground in a single dramatic night in 1936. The palace is gone, but its enormous Italian terraces, crumbling balustrades, headless statues and stone sphinxes still climb the hillside, free to wander.

There is something hauntingly romantic about walking these grand empty steps to nowhere, with the foundations of the vanished palace marked in the grass. It feels like the ruins of a lost civilisation hidden in a south London park.

The park is huge and full of free curiosities, a National Sports Centre, a maze, a boating lake and most famously the Victorian dinosaur sculptures at the far end. Between the ruins and the dinosaurs you have one of the strangest and best-value days out in London.