Peace Garden, Tavistock Square

The lowdown

Tavistock Square is an ordinary-looking Bloomsbury garden with an extraordinary theme, and it costs nothing to sit in. At its centre is a bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi, seated cross-legged, with a hollow in the base where people leave flowers, and over the years the whole square has quietly become a place dedicated to peace.

Around the lawns you will find a conscientious objectors' stone, a cherry tree planted for the victims of Hiroshima and a memorial to the dead of the 2005 London bombings, which happened just yards away. It is a small, thoughtful, free green room in the middle of the city, made for sitting still rather than passing through.