London free and empty: a 35th-floor glasshouse and a sarcophagus

London has so many famous things that few people reach the free, empty ones. Here are ten: three viewpoints with no ticket, an architect's house with a sarcophagus, the Thames foreshore at low tide and the city's two priciest churches, which let you in free for the evening service.

The order is geographic where it can be: Sky Garden, Postman's Park and One New Change are all in the City and go together in one afternoon; the Soane Museum pairs with Covent Garden; Little Venice and the canal want half a day of their own.

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Sky Garden, 1 Sky Garden Walk

A glasshouse across three floors on top of a City office block, with a terrace facing the Thames and Tower Bridge. Entry is free, but on a timed ticket, and tickets are released up to three weeks ahead — book the moment slots open and you pick the hour. A free ticket gets you in 10am–6pm on weekdays and 11am–9pm at weekends; the restaurants and bars up there stay open later, to midnight and to 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. When the free tickets are gone, a restaurant booking includes access to the garden. The postcode is EC3M 8AF, nearest station Monument.

One New Change and the tenth floor of Tate Modern

Two free viewpoints with no booking. One New Change is the shopping centre opposite St Paul's: take the lift to the roof terrace and the dome is right across from you at eye level, no ticket and no queue. Tate Modern has a viewing level with a café on the tenth floor of the Blavatnik Building, looking over the Thames, St Paul's and the City: free, Sun–Thu 10–17, Friday and Saturday to 21. The lift up only runs from levels 0–4, so go in through the Blavatnik Building, not the old power station.

Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields

The house of the architect John Soane, which an 1833 Act of Parliament bound to stay exactly as he left it after his death — and it has. Inside are two Hogarth series, A Rake's Progress and An Election, hung on walls that swing open like cupboard doors, the Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti I in the basement, and a room where the mirrors are set so you lose track of where it ends. Entry free, Wed–Sun 10–17, last admission 16.30, no booking. No more than ninety people fit inside at once, so there can be a wait outside, and when the house is full admissions close before 16.30.

Postman's Park, King Edward Street

A small park between St Martin's Le Grand and King Edward Street, five minutes from St Paul's. Along one wall stands a covered loggia with some fifty ceramic tiles: the Watts Memorial to people who died saving others, opened in 1900. Each tile gives a name, a date and one sentence about what happened — a child out of the river, a woman from a burning house, a workman in a sewer. Entry is free, from 8am to 7pm or dusk if that comes first, and it is the quietest fifteen minutes in the City.

Little Venice and the Regent's Canal towpath

At Warwick Avenue Tube station the Regent's Canal widens into a basin of houseboats, with a café on the water and a puppet theatre in a barge. From there you walk the towpath to Camden: about three kilometres and forty-odd minutes, past the Zoo and the villas of Regent's Park, with no ticket. The path breaks only at the Maida Hill Tunnel, which has no towpath: you come up to the street, cross the Edgware Road and take the steps back down to the canal. The same route on the London Waterbus costs €20 one way and takes about forty-five minutes — as long as walking.

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The Thames foreshore at low tide — and the permit it needs

Twice a day the water pulls back and a shingle beach appears under Tate Modern, by the Millennium Bridge and at Wapping, full of clay pipe stems, pottery and brick from four centuries. You go down by the river stairs and walking there is free. But: any searching, scraping or digging between Teddington and the Barrier needs a permit from the Port of London Authority — the standard one lasts a year and costs €49, with digging limited to 7.5 cm. Magnet fishing is banned even with a permit. Read the tide table before you go down.

Evensong — how to get into the two priciest churches for nothing

Westminster Abbey charges €36 for sightseeing and St Paul's €31. Both hold Evensong, the sung evening service, almost every day, and you go in with no ticket and no booking — you simply turn up early. You don't tour, you sit, and the choir is the one that made these churches famous in the first place. Times change by day and season, so check the official calendar the night before.

Live music in a pub, with no cover charge

London has live music every night in pubs that charge nothing at the door — you buy a beer and that is the ticket. Jazz in back rooms in Soho and Camden, Irish and folk sessions across north London (played in a circle, not on a stage), open mics in Hackney. The rule is simple: if there is a price on the door it is a gig; if there is nothing, they play for the drinks. The listings live on a chalkboard outside the pub rather than online, and things start around nine.

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The boat instead of the Tube

Uber Boat on the Thames takes a contactless card, at its own fares, and counts towards neither the daily nor the weekly cap — but it is the only transport in the city you actually see anything from. Boats leave the main piers every ten to twenty minutes, and the best stretch is Westminster to Greenwich: Parliament, the South Bank, Tower Bridge and Canary Wharf in turn, from the water.

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