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The famous but fictitious detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle first appeared in 1891. He still gets regular fan mail sent to his equally fictitious address of 221b Baker Street (the museum is next to No. 239).

The Viennese founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939) spent the last year of his life in a north London house. A Jew, he had fled the Nazis, bringing his celebrated couch with him (see Freud Museum).

A particular pleasure of this unique museum is watching visitors’ faces as they turn a corner and encounter yet another unexpected gem. Sir John Soane, one of Britain’s leading 19th-century architects, crammed three adjoining houses with antiques and treasures, displayed in the most ingenious ways. The basement crypt, designed to resemble a Roman catacomb, is particularly original.The Rake’s Progress (1753), a series of eight paintings by Hogarth, is another highlight. The houses are on the northern side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the heart of legal London, where gowned and bewigged lawyers roam. Lincoln’s Inn, on the east side of the square, is one of the best preserved Inns of Court in London, part of it dating from the 15th century.

Sir John Soane’s Museum

This pleasant square, spiked with palms, is popular at lunchtime, after work and at weekends, when there’s always a friendly atmosphere, especially in summer. With the most fashionable address in London, many of the square’s buildings are now occupied by film companies. On the north side is a church built for French Protestants under a charter granted by Edward VI in 1550. The redbrick St Patrick’s, on the east side, sometimes has music recitals. On the corner of Greek Street is the House of St Barnabas in Soho, a charitable foundation in an 18th-century building which is occasionally open to visitors.

Once a grand riverside palace, and later home to the Navy Board, Somerset House is now partly occupied by the Civil Service. A large amount of the building, though, is open to the public. Aside from the Courtauld Gallery it houses the Gilbert Collection of decorative art and the Hermitage Rooms, which display a collection of art from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.

The most accessible arts centre in London still has the air of friendly, egalitarian optimism that brought it into life in the 1950s and 60s. The Royal Festival Hall’s three concert halls have diverse programmes while the Hayward Gallery is a major venue for large art exhibitions. The National Film Theatre, run by the British Film Institute, puts on a full programme of movies. The Royal National Theatre’s three theatres (Olivier, Cottesloe and Lyttleton) are further east along the riverside.

This priory church was elevated to a cathedral in 1905. It has many connections with the area’s Elizabethan theatres, and with Shakespeare, who is commemorated in a memorial and a stained-glass window. US college founder John Harvard, who was baptised here, is remembered in The Harvard Chapel.

Streets such as Fournier Street, lined with 18th-century Huguenot silk weavers’ houses, are a reminder that this area, just east of the City, has provided a refuge for immigrant populations for centuries. London’s oldest market, Old Spitalfields Market still has stalls selling food, as well as several cafés and shops dotted around its edge. But Sunday is the day when the market draws hundreds, eager to find a bargain among the fashion, vintage clothing, and crafts stalls here. Opposite the market is one of Europe’s great Baroque churches. Christ Church (1716) was designed by Wren’s pupil, architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736).

A survivor of the Great Fire, this is London’s only Norman Church apart from St John’s chapel in the Tower of London. It was founded in 1123 by a courtier of Henry I, and its solid pillars and Norman choir have remained unaltered. The 14th-century Lady Chapel, restored by Sir Aston Webb in 1890, once housed a printing press where Benjamin Franklin worked.