Two tall stone towers with pointed turrets and gold tips, joined high up by two blue and white walkways, with blue chains swooping down to the banks on either side, standing on stone piers in a brown river with a riverboat passing, and glass office towers behind under white clouds and blue sky

Tower Bridge’s two towers and the high walkways that join them.

Before you go

Prices
Adults £18, children 5 to 15 £9, 16 and 17-year-olds £13.50, under 5s free
Open
Daily 9.30am to 6pm, but 11.30am to 6pm on the second Saturday of each month; last entry 5pm; closed 24 to 26 December
Nearest station
Tower Hill (Circle and District lines), 10 minutes’ walk, step-free
Plan your journey
TfL Journey Planner, Google Maps or Uber

For families

  • Tower Bridge Website
  • Tower Bridge for Families
  • When the bridge opens for ships
  • Booking: book on Tower Bridge’s website by the day before for 10% off; arrive no more than 20 minutes late.
  • 2 for 1 by train: if you travel by National Rail, book the “National Rail Days Out - Two Visitors” ticket online, which allows two full-price adults for the price of one, and bring a printed National Rail ticket for each of you.
  • Queue: everyone queues outside, even with a booked ticket, and walks outdoors to the Engine Rooms, so check the weather.
  • Buggies (strollers): a buggy can go all the way round by lift (elevator), but there’s nowhere to leave one.
  • Food and drink: no café, so bring your own food/drinks and eat inside or in Potters Field Park.
  • Bags: suitcases and wheeled bags aren’t allowed in, but a large bag of baby-care things is fine.

For neurodivergent visitors

  • Relaxed Opening
  • Visual story (also as a PDF)
  • Access tool kits: ask staff for a kit with ear defenders, a weighted blanket and a pop-up tent.
  • Quiet spaces: two quiet rooms with lights that can be dimmed. Neither has step-free access.

Accessibility

  • Access and Accessibility at Tower Bridge
  • Queuing: staff at the entrance can arrange priority entry for anyone whose disability means they can’t queue.
  • Lifts (elevators): both towers have lifts up to the walkways, but they can be out of order, so check first.
  • To the Engine Rooms: take the lift down from the bridge and follow a partly cobbled path, narrow in places.
  • Wheelchairs and walking frames: borrow a wheelchair or a rollator (walking frame); mobility scooters are welcome.
  • Disabled visitors and companions: disabled visitors pay a reduced price, and each can bring one companion free.

Two tall stone towers with pointed turrets, floodlit white against a black night sky, joined high up by two walkways lit white and purple, with the two halves of the road between them raised steeply into the air and lit blue underneath

Tower Bridge open at night, with both halves of the road raised to let a ship through.

Tower Bridge is the Victorian bridge with two towers that crosses the Thames beside the Tower of London. It opened in 1894, and its bascules (the sections of road that rise) still open around 500 times a year to let ships through.

Top tip: you can step over the gap between the two bascules without paying to tour the bridge - just walk onto the pavement (sidewalk) on the bridge itself and stop halfway across. You can also feel the bascules going up and down a bit as the traffic goes across them, and if you jump up and down you can feel them move.

Fun fact: in 1952 a double-decker bus was approaching the bridge in the fog. The bascules began to lift; the bus driver accelerated and successfully jumped the gap.

A ticket covers the two towers, the high walkways with their glass floors, and the Victorian Engine Rooms on the south side of the river. Allow about an hour and a half.

A tall stone tower lit up at night, with a green pointed roof, lit windows and a road arch lit blue underneath, seen from a wet pavement with railings and a few people, under a teal-blue riveted girder that sweeps overhead with white rods hanging from it

One of the two towers at night, seen from the pavement on the bridge.

Three free audio tours, about 45 minutes each, play on your own phone, so bring headphones and a charged phone. The Highlights Tour is also in Arabic, Mandarin, German, Italian, French and Spanish.

The way round

At the Ticket Office, on the north-west side of the bridge, pick up a Cat Trail Apprenticeship Record, free with your ticket. On the way round, children look for characters from the Tower Bridge Cat books, such as Bella the cat and Stan the Stoker, and collect stamps on the record.

A big lift takes you up the North Tower, or you can climb about 200 steps, with benches to rest on. If your children can manage the climb, walk up. About 80 steps up there’s a room with a replica diver’s suit, and the lift doesn’t stop there.

Looking straight down at someone's legs in jeans and black trainers, standing on a glass floor, with a road far below where a white van, a dark car and a lorry drive along, and brown river water beside it

Looking down at the road and the river through the walkway’s glass floor.

The Walkways, 42 metres above the river with big windows on both sides, cross from the top of the North Tower to the South Tower.

Part of the floor is glass, 33.5 metres above the road, so you look straight down on buses and boats. Each glass panel can hold the weight of an elephant or two black cabs (London taxis). Anyone who’d rather not stand on the glass can keep to a narrow path at either side, with handrails. The West Walkway’s glass floor has a mirror above it, for a photo of yourselves standing over the traffic. From the walkways you can see the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Shard to the west, and Canary Wharf to the east.

In the South Tower, look up at the roof, where seven statues of the workers who built the bridge are hidden.

Go down by lift or about 200 steps. Outside, follow the blue line painted on the pavement (sidewalk) across the bridge to the Engine Rooms, about 5 minutes’ walk. Every alternate one of the 80 bronze plaques set into the line names someone who built or worked on the bridge, such as John Chalk, a rivet boy who started at 14. A lift or about 40 steps take you down to river level.

A big pale green machine with a spoked wheel, a coiled copper pipe and grey castings, beside a large black cogwheel on a brass shaft, behind black railings in a brick-walled room, with giant cogs painted on the wall to the left

Machinery in the Engine Rooms, the last part of the visit.

A huge spoked flywheel painted green with red and yellow lines, beside a smaller wheel and polished brass parts, behind black railings with a blue sign saying Danger, keep behind railings, do not touch the engines, under a white vaulted ceiling with copper lamps and a thick grey pipe

One of the Victorian steam engines that still raised the bridge until 1976.

The Engine Rooms are worth the walk. They hold the original Victorian steam engines and coal-fired boilers, with displays that show how they work. The engines could raise the bascules in 60 seconds, and the stokers shovelled more than 20 tonnes of coal a week. Cats lived in and around the Engine Rooms until the early 1980s. You leave through the gift shop, which sells Tower Bridge Cat gifts.

Watching the bridge open

The bridge opens for ships on some days; check the timetable of openings. You can watch from anywhere outside around the bridge, and from the south-west side you also see the ships pass the Tower of London. If you’re on the walkways when it opens, you can see the ship pass below your feet.

With a toddler, you may get as much from seeing the bridge from outside and watching it open, which is free, as from the paid visit inside.

Food

Don’t eat nuts inside, and keep glass bottles away from the glass floors. The visit ends beside Potters Field Park, which is a good place for a picnic afterwards.

When to go

On Quieter Time mornings, Tower Bridge allows fewer visitors until 10.30am. On the second Saturday of each month and on Tuesdays in the UK school holidays, there are drop-in family crafts in the South Tower, free with your ticket and best for children of 6 to 10.

The Tower of London on the same day

The Tower of London is next door, so it works well to visit both attractions on the same day. Outside the UK school holidays the Tower is quietest before 11am, so get there when it opens and visit the bridge in the afternoon. In the school holidays the Tower is busiest in the morning, so visit the bridge first and the Tower after 1.30pm.

Tickets

A family ticket costs 10% less than single tickets. One adult with two children pays from £32.40, and two adults pay from £40.50 with one child to £56.70 with three. Book a free Under 5 ticket for each child under 5. A ticket allows you in only once, so if you leave, you need a new one to re-enter.

Getting there

The visit starts at the Ticket Office, on the north side of the river near Tower Hill station, and ends at the Engine Rooms on the south side of the river. London Bridge station, about 1 km from the Engine Rooms, has the Northern and Jubilee line tube and National Rail trains. For tickets and paying by contactless, see Travelling around London.