Stairs before lifts: the Monument
Before the towers, the City had one high place, and it still has no lift. The Monument, the fluted Portland stone column on Fish Street Hill designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, was completed in 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire. It stands 202 feet tall, exactly the distance from its base to the site of the Pudding Lane bakery where the fire began. Three hundred and eleven steps spiral up inside to a caged gallery beneath a gilded urn of copper flames, and everyone who makes it to the top is handed a certificate on the way out.
Hooke meant it to serve as a scientific instrument too, a vertical telescope with a small laboratory underneath, though the traffic on Fish Street Hill shook it too much for precise readings. It keeps daytime hours, so it belongs to the late afternoon rather than the evening. Climb it around four, and the rest of the plan begins at street level with your legs still talking. Laura, who treats a spiral staircase as a race, is usually up there first, naming the bridges one by one.
The free heights, and the price of free
Sky Garden fills the top three floors of 20 Fenchurch Street, Rafael Viñoly's top-heavy tower that Londoners nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie. While it was still being built, its concave face focused sunlight onto the street hard enough to warp parts of a parked car, which is why the south side now carries a shading screen. Inside is a steep terraced garden beneath a vast glass roof, with bars on the upper levels and an open terrace. Entry is free, by timed ticket.
Horizon 22, opened in 2023 at the top of 22 Bishopsgate, is higher still: a viewing floor on the fifty-eighth storey, glass on every side, with the Shard across the river at almost the same eye level. It too is free and ticketed. The Garden at 120, on the fifteenth floor of 120 Fenchurch Street, is the easy one of the three: an open-air roof garden with a long pergola, normally entered without booking and closed when wind or rain make it unwise.
Free means competition. Tickets for Sky Garden and Horizon 22 are released in batches some weeks ahead, and summer evening slots vanish first. Security at street level works like an airport's and adds a queue of its own. And a free floor has no chair to hold: you stand, you look, you move on. Treat these places as a golden hour, never as the whole evening.
Paid heights: a glass, and a chair to keep
Paying for a drink buys a seat, and a seat buys time. At 110 Bishopsgate, glass lifts climb the outside of the building to SUSHISAMBA on the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth floors and Duck & Waffle on the fortieth. City Social takes the twenty-fourth floor of Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower, lower but closer to the lanes it looks down on. Under the glass dome of 30 St Mary Axe, the Gherkin, a restaurant and bar run by Searcys take public reservations for a view that was once kept for the building's tenants.
Inside Sky Garden itself, the brasserie and the restaurant on the upper floors sell tables that include entry, which turns the free garden into a paid evening with a guaranteed seat. For many guests that is the better trade.
On a clear night each of these rooms shows the same scene from a slightly different angle: the river as a black curve, the bridges strung with light, and the Shard across the water, lit to its tip.
Winning the window seat
Window tables are the point of the whole exercise and the hardest thing to secure. Three habits help. Reserve the first sitting of the evening, when the room is emptiest and the sky still light; the table you want is more often free at six than at eight. Ask for the window in writing when you reserve, then again, politely, on arrival. And be flexible about the day: Monday to Wednesday evenings are gentler than Thursdays, when half the City seems to be celebrating something.
For the free floors, note when new tickets are released and be ready at that moment, then look again on the morning itself, because cancellations reappear. If the evening slots have gone, a late-afternoon ticket followed by a drink at a paid bar makes a better plan than no height at all.
Face west for the sunset and east for the view after dark. From the City the sun goes down behind St Paul's and the West End; once it has set, the interesting side is east and south, towards Tower Bridge and the long bend of the river.
An evening in three altitudes
Height is an opening act. A good City evening climbs early and comes down for dinner: the Monument at four if you are feeling energetic, a free floor at six, a paid bar at seven, then a street-level table somewhere that does not charge for altitude. The lanes around Leadenhall Market lie within a few minutes of every tower in this entry, and Bank and Monument is the natural base, its hotels listed street by street.
If the sky is kind and you would rather feel the wind than look through glass, our rooftop terraces entry covers the open-air bars along the river. For a client evening in which the height is part of the hospitality, the business events arrangement suits better. The rates page runs from a single hour at £250 up to four hours over dinner at £900.
Who enjoys the altitude
Nancy asks for a table near the terrace on Bishopsgate and watches the sun go down with the attention other people give a wine list. Tiffany photographs reflections, and at dusk a City tower is nothing but reflections; she will show you the frame before you have noticed the view. Karolina walks the City with her eyes on the cornices and will explain the Gherkin's curve before you have thought to ask about it.
Nancy is on the blondes page, and Karolina among the statuesque companions. Tell the desk the floor and the hour, and she meets you at street level, where the security queue begins.