London Zoo

Where it sits. London Zoo occupies the northern edge of Regent's Park, split into three sections by the Outer Circle road and the Regent's Canal, which runs straight through the middle of it; canal boats pass within a few metres of the animals. Primrose Hill rises just to the north, and the whole site covers about 36 acres of what was originally the Prince Regent's park.

The story behind it. The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 by Stamford Raffles and Humphry Davy, and its collection opened here in April 1828 as a scientific institution closed to the general public, who were admitted only from 1847. It is therefore the world's first zoo in the modern sense — a menagerie assembled for study rather than display — and it accumulated a string of firsts: the first reptile house in 1849, the first public aquarium in 1853, the first insect house in 1881, and the first children's zoo in 1938. It also gave English the word zoo, a music-hall abbreviation of zoological gardens that stuck. The architecture is a museum of twentieth-century design in its own right: Decimus Burton laid out the original grounds and buildings from 1828; Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton's spiralling concrete Penguin Pool of 1934 is Grade I listed and now stands empty, its ramps having proved bad for penguins' feet; the tented aluminium Snowdon Aviary of 1965, by Cedric Price, Frank Newby and Lord Snowdon, was reworked in 2022 as Monkey Valley for colobus monkeys; Hugh Casson's brooding Elephant House of 1965 is Grade II* listed and no longer holds elephants, which moved to Whipsnade in 2001.

On screen. The Reptile House is where Harry Potter's story properly begins. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the Dursleys drag Harry along to Dudley's birthday outing at the zoo, Harry finds himself talking to a snake through the glass, the glass vanishes, Dudley falls in, and the snake thanks him on its way out. The scene was filmed in the real Reptile House at London Zoo, and the building itself is worth attention: it opened in 1927 to the design of Joan Beauchamp Procter, the Society's curator of reptiles and one of the first women to design a major zoo building, working with the architect Sir Edward Guy Dawber, and carved cobras by George Alexander flank the entrance. Two details differ from what is on screen. The book's escaping reptile is a Brazilian boa constrictor while the film uses a Burmese python, and the snake in the finished shots is a digital creation rather than the animal that lived in the enclosure. The zoo marks the vivarium used in the scene, so you can stand where Dudley pressed his nose to the glass.

What you actually see today. Around 14,000 animals across some 400 species, with the modern emphasis on conservation breeding rather than spectacle. The strongest exhibits are Land of the Lions, a walk-through Gir Forest recreation with Asiatic lions and a mocked-up Indian railway station; Gorilla Kingdom; Tiger Territory for Sumatran tigers; the walk-through Rainforest Life with sloths and titi monkeys, above a nocturnal Night Life section; Penguin Beach, England's largest penguin pool; and the Blackburn Pavilion for birds, in a converted Victorian reptile house with a hummingbird hall. The Reptile House itself remains a highlight for its interior as much as its animals: a top-lit hall with a central island of tanks, unchanged in its bones since 1927.

Getting there and timing. Camden Town on the Northern line is a fifteen-minute walk through the park, and Regent's Park and Baker Street stations are similar from the south; bus 274 stops at the gate. A pleasant alternative is the canal boat from Camden Lock or Little Venice, which passes the zoo. Gates usually open at ten in the morning, with last admission around an hour and a half before closing, which is late afternoon in winter and early evening in summer. Tickets are considerably cheaper booked online in advance than at the gate, and the site is busiest in school holidays and at weekends; a weekday morning in term time is calm. Allow four hours for a proper visit. Paths are surfaced and largely step-free, with accessible toilets and free carer entry, though the site slopes in places and the canal tunnel underpasses are narrow.

Nearby. Regent's Park itself, with Queen Mary's Gardens and its 12,000 roses, is immediately south; Primrose Hill, with the best free skyline view in north London, is five minutes north across the Outer Circle; and Camden Market is twenty minutes east along the towpath.