Most of the towers in the City of London are offices, and you cannot go into them. Three have free public viewing levels open to anyone who turns up or books online: Horizon 22 on Level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate, the Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street, and the rooftop garden on the 15th floor of Fen Court. The Gherkin is not one of them. Its restaurant and bar closed on 1 January 2026 and the building has no public access at all.
That is the whole answer in one paragraph, and it is worth having it clearly, because the nicknames get repeated far more often than the opening arrangements. Our guide to the City of London covers the Square Mile as a place to walk around; this page is about which of its towers will let you in.
Which towers you can go up
- Horizon 22, 22 Bishopsgate
- Free. Level 58. Timed tickets booked online
- Sky Garden, 20 Fenchurch Street
- Free. Tickets released weekly, three weeks ahead
- The Garden at 120, Fen Court
- Free. 15th floor. No booking needed
- The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe
- No public access. The restaurant closed on 1 January 2026
- The Leadenhall Building, the Scalpel, the Can of Ham
- Offices. Look from the street
- 8 Bishopsgate
- Advertises a viewing level called The Lookout; check the building's website first
The Gherkin: what it is, and why you cannot go up it
30 St Mary Axe, the tapering glass cone everyone calls the Gherkin, was completed in 2004 to a Foster + Partners design. It stands on the site of the Baltic Exchange, wrecked by a bomb in 1992, and its curved shape was partly a response to the planning objections a conventional slab would have attracted. It is the building that made the City's skyline photogenic, and almost every subsequent tower has been named after a household object in imitation.
It has always been an office building. For years the only way in for the public was to book a table at the restaurant and bar occupying the top floors, which came with the dome at the summit and a 360-degree view. That route has now closed: the operator's own notice says that from 1 January 2026 the venue is closed for the foreseeable future because of building renovations at 30 St Mary Axe.
No dinner reservation will get you inside 30 St Mary Axe in 2026. Listings sites and older articles still describe booking a table as the way up the Gherkin. The venue is shut and no reopening date has been published. If someone offers to sell you access, treat it with suspicion.
The building does occasionally open during the Open House Festival each September, when normally private buildings admit visitors, usually by ballot and always over-subscribed; our guide to Open House explains how that works. Outside that, the Gherkin is something you photograph.
Horizon 22: the highest free view in London
Horizon 22 occupies Level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate, the tallest building in the City. It describes itself as London's highest free public viewing gallery, and that claim holds: nothing else you can reach without paying is higher.
Entry is free but ticketed. You choose a date and time on the Horizon 22 website and receive a QR code. Two lifts take 41 seconds to reach Level 58, travelling at up to eight metres a second. The gallery gives roughly 300 degrees of view, which means there is one direction you cannot see; in practice you look south over the river and the Shard, west along the Thames, and north over the City.
| Horizon 22 | Detail |
|---|---|
| Price | Free |
| Weekday hours | 10.00–18.00 |
| Saturday | 10.00–17.00 |
| Sunday | 10.00–16.00 |
| Booking | Required; standard tickets and a separate route for groups of 15 or more |
| Extras | An audio-visual "Guide to the View" and a glass of sparkling wine can be added; special assistance tickets are available |
There is airport-style security with x-ray scanners at the entrance, so allow a few minutes and leave luggage, bikes and scooters elsewhere. Times above were correct in September 2026; check the Horizon 22 site for the current ones.
Sky Garden: free, but the booking is the hard part
The Sky Garden sits at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, the building with the bulging top that Londoners call the Walkie-Talkie. It is a planted three-storey atrium with an outdoor terrace, and access is free on weekdays from 10am to 6pm and at weekends from 11am to 9pm, with weekend hours also applying on bank holidays.
The complication is the ticket release. Free tickets come out every Monday morning, excluding bank holidays, three weeks in advance for the whole of that week. Miss the release and the week fills. Walk-ins are possible if there is space, but not after 5pm on weekdays. Slots last an hour, and there is a Challenge 25 age policy, with under-16s not admitted after 6pm on weekdays or 9pm at weekends.
Our dedicated page on Sky Garden tickets and how to book them goes through the release in detail, including what to do when the week you want has gone.
The Garden at 120: the one with no booking at all
Fen Court, at 120 Fenchurch Street, has a free public roof garden on its 15th floor, and you do not need a ticket. You walk in, take the lift, and step out among the planting with the Gherkin and the Leadenhall Building directly above you.
It is lower than the other two and the view is correspondingly more intimate: you are among the towers rather than above them, which many people prefer for photographs. Opening hours run daily from 10am, until 9pm in summer (1 April to 30 September) and 6.30pm in winter (1 October to 31 March), with weekends closing at 5pm year-round. The garden is closed on bank holidays. Groups of 12 or more are asked to contact the team in advance.
The Garden at 120 is the fallback when the others are full. No booking, no queue system and no time limit, which makes it the only one of the three you can decide to visit ten minutes beforehand. The 14th floor has a restaurant if you want to sit down, and at ground level the Fen Court passageway holds Skyframe, a large digital art ceiling, and the Gilt of Cain sculpture commemorating the abolition of the slave trade.
8 Bishopsgate and The Lookout
8 Bishopsgate, the stepped tower directly beside 22 Bishopsgate, advertises a public viewing level called The Lookout on its own website, alongside a general enquiries address for it. When we checked in September 2026 the page for The Lookout was returning an error, so we cannot confirm current opening arrangements or how to book.
Treat it as worth checking and not worth planning around. If it is open when you visit, it gives a second high view within thirty seconds' walk of Horizon 22. If it is not, you have lost nothing, because you were going to the building next door anyway.
The towers you can only look at, and what to call them
The rest of the cluster is private office space. Knowing which is which makes the skyline legible from the street.
| Nickname | Address | Public access |
|---|---|---|
| The Gherkin | 30 St Mary Axe | None |
| The Walkie-Talkie | 20 Fenchurch Street | Sky Garden, free with a ticket |
| The Cheesegrater | 122 Leadenhall Street | Offices; the sloping public plaza underneath is open |
| The Scalpel | 52 Lime Street | None |
| The Can of Ham | 70 St Mary Axe | None |
| Twentytwo | 22 Bishopsgate | Horizon 22, free with a ticket |
None of these is an official name. They are shorthand that Londoners and the property press adopted and the owners eventually accepted. The one genuine rule behind the cluster is a set of protected sightlines: the towers are squeezed into a small area east of the Bank junction precisely because planning policy shields views of St Paul's and the Tower from other directions. That is why the City's skyline looks like a bundle rather than a spread.
The Shard, the tallest building in the United Kingdom, is not in the City at all; it stands across the river in Southwark and charges for entry. Our page on the View from The Shard covers that, and our comparison of London's viewing platforms sets the paid and free options side by side, including the London Eye.
Where to stand for the best photograph
The towers are hard to photograph because you cannot get far enough away at street level. Four spots solve that, and all are free.
- St Mary Axe at the Bury Street junction. The classic straight-up shot of the Gherkin, taken from the small paved square at its foot.
- The plaza under the Leadenhall Building. The building is lifted off the ground, so you can stand beneath the frame and look up through it at 22 Bishopsgate.
- The garden at St Dunstan in the East. Ruined church walls in the foreground, glass towers behind. The best contrast shot in the City.
- The north end of Tower Bridge. Far enough back to get the whole cluster in one frame, with the river in front.
For the wider list of places to look down from rather than up at, see the best free viewpoints in London and roof gardens and free terraces.
One morning that covers all three free levels
The three free viewing spaces are within about ten minutes' walk of each other, which makes a straightforward route.
- Book ahead. Sky Garden tickets three weeks out on the Monday release; Horizon 22 whenever its calendar opens for your date. The Garden at 120 needs nothing.
- Start at Horizon 22 at opening, 10am, when the light is still coming from the east and the gallery is emptiest.
- Walk down to Fen Court for the 15th-floor garden, about five minutes, and look up at the towers instead of down at the city.
- Finish at the Sky Garden in your booked slot, then come down and eat at Leadenhall Market, two minutes away.
If you have time to spare between slots, the Monument gives a very different, much lower and considerably more strenuous view for a small charge, and Guildhall and the Roman amphitheatre are a ten-minute walk west.
Come back after dark for the other version of the same skyline. Our guide to London at night has the evening options, and rooftop bars in London covers the places where the view comes with a drinks bill attached. The rest of the buildings in this section are listed under landmarks and historic buildings.
Frequently asked questions
Can you go up the Gherkin?
No. 30 St Mary Axe is a private office building, and the restaurant and bar at the top, which used to be the only public route in, closed on 1 January 2026 because of building renovations. No reopening date has been announced. Occasional access during the Open House Festival is the only exception.
Which London viewing platforms are free?
In the City, Horizon 22 on Level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate, the Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street and the roof garden at Fen Court are all free. Horizon 22 and the Sky Garden need a free ticket booked in advance; the Garden at 120 does not.
What is the highest free view in London?
Horizon 22, which describes itself as London's highest free public viewing gallery. It is on Level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate, the tallest building in the City of London, and the lifts take 41 seconds to get there.
Do I need to book the Sky Garden?
Book if you can. Free tickets are released every Monday morning, three weeks ahead, for the whole of that week. Walk-in entry is possible if there is capacity, but not after 5pm on weekdays, and popular slots go quickly.
Why do the City's skyscrapers all have nicknames?
They started as shorthand for the shapes and stuck. The Gherkin set the pattern in 2004, and the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheesegrater, the Scalpel and the Can of Ham followed. None of them is the building's official name, which is normally just the street address.
Sources
- Horizon 22 - Plan your visit (checked September 2026)
- Searcys - Searcys at The Gherkin closure announcement (checked September 2026)
- Fen Court - The Garden at 120, opening times (checked September 2026)
- Sky Garden - Booking and opening hours (checked September 2026)
- 8 Bishopsgate - building and The Lookout (checked September 2026)