Bristol travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bristol

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Velvet · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Bath Abbey

   A parish church rebuilt from 1499 in perpendicular Gothic, with fan vaulting by the masons who roofed Westminster's Henry VII Chapel and a west front carved with angels climbing ladders to heaven. Edgar was crowned first king of all England on this site in 973.

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2. 

   2© Hugh Llewelyn · CC BY-SA 2.0

   SS Great Britain

   Brunel's iron steamship of 1843, the first to combine an iron hull with a screw propeller, and the largest vessel afloat when launched. Salvaged from the Falklands in 1970, she sits in her original dry dock under a glass sea, with the hull kept dry beneath it.

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   Bristol Cathedral

   A cathedral whose fourteenth-century choir gives nave, aisles and choir the same height — a hall church, the earliest in Britain and rare in Europe. The Norman chapter house of about 1160 has the finest surviving decoration of its kind in England.

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4. 

   4© Diliff · CC BY 2.5

   Roman Baths

   A Roman bath complex and temple to Sulis Minerva built from about AD 70 around Britain's only hot spring, which still delivers 1.17 million litres a day at 46°C. The Great Bath's lead floor is Roman; the statues above it are Victorian, and the water is not safe to touch.

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5. 

   5© Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 3.0

   The Circus

   A ring of thirty-three houses in three curved terraces, designed by John Wood the Elder in 1754 and finished by his son, with three entrances so that no street runs straight through. Its diameter matches Stonehenge, which Wood had surveyed.

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6. 

   6© The original uploader was Rbrwr at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Clifton Cathedral

   The Catholic cathedral of Bristol, built in 1973 in concrete and hexagonal in plan so that no worshipper sits more than fifteen metres from the altar — an early response to the Second Vatican Council. It was listed at Grade II* in 2000, unusually soon for a modern building.

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7. 

   7

   Bristol Zoo

   Opened in Clifton in 1836, this was the fifth-oldest zoo in the world, keeping some 300 mammals of 50 species — among them Livingstone's fruit bats and aye-ayes seen in few other British collections. The Clifton site closed in 2022 after 186 years.

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8. 

   8© The original uploader was Steinsky at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery

   The city museum of 1905, in an Edwardian baroque hall paid for by the Wills tobacco family, covering Egyptology, Bristol glass and a gallery of British art. A Banksy, the Paint-Pot Angel, has stayed since his 2009 takeover of the building.

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   9

   Jane Austen Centre

   An exhibition at 40 Gay Street on Jane Austen's two spells in Bath, the city where Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are set and where her father died. It has run the Jane Austen Festival each September since 2001, when several hundred people walk the city in Regency dress.

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10. 

    10

    Little Solsbury Hill

    An Iron Age hillfort on a flat-topped hill above Batheaston, with ramparts enclosing about two hectares and evidence of burning at the entrance. Peter Gabriel's 1977 song was written after he walked up here; the view takes in the whole Avon valley.

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1. 

   1© Rwendland · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Dyrham Park

   A baroque house rebuilt between 1692 and 1704 for William Blathwayt, secretary at war to William III, with a west front by William Talman. Its Dutch-influenced interiors and delftware came from his wife's fortune, and the deer park is medieval.

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2. 

   2© Chilli Head from Weston-super-Mare, UK · CC BY 2.0

   Tyntesfield

   A Gothic Revival house of 1863 near Wraxall, built by a Bristol merchant on guano money and left with its Victorian contents almost untouched. The National Trust bought it in 2002 after a public appeal raised £8.2 million in one hundred days.

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3. 

   3© Diliff · CC BY 2.5

   Aquae Sulis

   The Roman town at Bath, founded soon after the conquest around the hot spring and named for Sulis, the local goddess the Romans identified with Minerva. Curse tablets thrown into the spring — mostly about stolen clothes at the baths — are UNESCO-listed documents.

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4. 

   4© Matt Gibson from Bristol, United Kingdom · CC BY 2.0

   St Mary Redcliffe

   A parish church that Elizabeth I called the fairest in England, its 89-metre spire the tallest structure in Bristol. A whalebone brought back by John Cabot in 1497 hangs inside, and a shell fired in 1941 is set in the floor where it landed.

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5. 

   5© NotFromUtrecht · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Matthew

   A full-size replica of the caravel John Cabot sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland in 1497, built in the city between 1994 and 1996 and sailed across the Atlantic for the voyage's five hundredth anniversary. She is moored beside the SS Great Britain and still goes out on trips.

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6. 

   6© nick sarebi · CC BY 2.0

   Thornbury Castle

   A Tudor house begun in 1511 by Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was executed for treason ten years later with the building unfinished. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn stayed ten nights in 1535; it is now a hotel, the only Tudor castle in England used as one.

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   Bristol Castle

   A Norman castle on the north bank of the Avon, one of the strongest in England and the prison of Robert of Gloucester's royal captives. Cromwell ordered it demolished in 1656; a vaulted chamber and fragments of wall survive in Castle Park.

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8. 

   8© Photograph taken by Rob Brewer · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Cabot Tower

   A 32-metre red sandstone tower on Brandon Hill, built in the 1890s for the four hundredth anniversary of Cabot's Atlantic crossing. The climb is a spiral of 108 steps, free of charge, and the platform gives the widest view over the city and the gorge.

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9. 

   9© Stevekeiretsu · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Stanton Drew stone circles

   Three Neolithic stone circles outside the village, the largest 113 metres across and second only to Avebury in Britain, raised between 3000 and 2000 BC. Geophysical survey in 1997 found nine concentric rings of buried postholes inside the great circle.

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10. 

    10© Nick · CC BY 2.0

    Caldicot Castle

    A medieval stone castle in Monmouthshire begun about 1100 by the Norman earls of Hereford, near the site of a Saxon stronghold. Thomas of Woodstock, son of Edward III, held it until his death in 1391; the round keep and gatehouse stand in a public park.

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