Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
Hidden Gems & Odd Finds picks in London.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
Through the Smeg Fridge: London's Bar Behind a Breakfast Cafe
Behind a Shoreditch breakfast counter, a Smeg fridge swings open to reveal a basement speakeasy where the Mayor holds court. You just have to know the password.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
A Pub Inside a Victorian Toilet Block in Central London
Beneath Holborn's pavement lies a cocktail bar housed in an 1890s underground convenience. The original porcelain and tilework remain; the stalls now serve gin instead of their former purpose.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
Grant Museum of Zoology Jar Store Tour and Micrarium Cabinet Viewing
Behind locked doors at UCL's Grant Museum, monthly tours reveal Victorian-era wet specimen storage and the Micrarium's 2,300 backlit microscope slides—a rarified encounter with scientific preservation rarely opened to the public.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
Forgotten Cholera Burial Ground Walking Tour in Clerkenwell
A public health historian leads Thursday evening walks through Clerkenwell and Soho, tracing unmarked plague pits, the 1854 Broad Street pump site, and burial grounds from London's deadliest cholera outbreak—complete with Victorian mortality maps and period mourning attire.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
Forgotten Medical Instrument Collection in Bloomsbury Townhouse Museum
A private Georgian townhouse near Russell Square opens by appointment to reveal four floors of 18th and 19th-century surgical instruments, apothecary jars, and anatomical wax models curated by a retired pathologist with clinical precision.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
London's IU and Jungkook K-Pop Listening Rooms — Soho and Shoreditch Bars With the New Drop on Loop
Three London bars have quietly become listening rooms for K-pop releases. When IU or Jungkook drops, they spin vinyl, project the music video, and let the room fill with people who came to actually hear the album.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
The Hunterian Museum — A Surgeon's Anatomy Cabinet, Open to the Public, Free, in Holborn
John Hunter's eighteenth-century anatomical collection, the founding cabinet of modern surgery, reopened in 2023 inside the Royal College of Surgeons after a six-year refit. Free, by timed ticket, two rooms, every specimen labeled.
- Hidden Gems & Odd Finds
A Coffee Shop Inside a Victorian Public Toilet
Fitzrovia's Attendant Coffee lives inside an 19th century underground gents' toilet. The tiles and cubicles are still there. It sounds completely unhinged — but the coffee is genuinely good. Here's how they turned "weird" into "cozy."
