Things to do in Brighton

Landmark · City centre, beside the Old Steine

George IV's seaside pleasure palace — Indian domes outside, Chinese interiors inside, a cast-iron banqueting room with a dragon holding the chandelier, dropped in the middle of an English town.

Local tip: The town bought it from Queen Victoria in 1850 for £53,000 after she decided she disliked Brighton, which is why a royal palace is municipal property. During the First World War it was used as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers — the story is told inside and is the part most visitors miss entirely.

Neighborhood · Between the station and the Pavilion

A grid of narrow streets of independent shops, record dealers, vintage clothing, cafes and the vegetarian restaurants Brighton built its food reputation on.

Local tip: Terre à Terre on East Street has been doing serious vegetarian cooking since 1993, long before it was fashionable, and the city's meat-free density is genuinely unusual for Britain. Kensington Gardens and Gardner Street are the heart of it; the Open Market up on London Road is where people actually shop.

Landmark · The promenade, from the Marina to Hove

A working Victorian pleasure pier, the burnt skeleton of a second one standing in the water, and a 162-metre observation tower on the shore between them.

Local tip: The West Pier closed in 1975, collapsed and burnt in 2003, and its ruin is now the most photographed thing in the city. The i360 next to it is a cautionary tale with a view: it entered administration in December 2024, the council released its debt in January 2025, and it was sold to the bar group Nightcap in February 2025, with the council now taking a share of tower revenue. It is trading again — the local argument about what it cost is not over.

Nightlife · East of the Steine, below the Regency crescents

The city's LGBTQ+ heart — St James's Street's bars and cafes, with Thomas Read Kemp's Regency crescents and squares stepping down to the sea behind them.

Local tip: Brighton Pride, on the first weekend of August, is one of the largest in the UK and effectively closes the city for a weekend; book anything you need well in advance or leave town. The Kemp Town estate proper — Sussex Square, Lewes Crescent — has private enclosed gardens with a tunnel under the road to the beach, and Lewis Carroll used to stay there.

Nature · Four miles north of Hove, inside the national park

The largest dry valley in Britain, cut into the chalk, with a view over the Weald that Constable called the grandest in the world — and a bus from the seafront that goes straight there.

Local tip: The Breeze up to the Dyke runs from the seafront and Brighton Pier in summer, so you can be on the Downs without a car in forty minutes. Ditchling Beacon, further east, is the highest point in East Sussex and the top of the brutal climb every London-to-Brighton cyclist remembers.

Nature · Brighton Marina to Saltdean, along the base of the chalk cliffs

Three and a half miles of sea-level path under a white chalk cliff, built in the 1930s as a sea defence, running east from the Marina past Rottingdean to Saltdean.

Local tip: It is flat, car-free the whole way and almost nobody who lives in the city centre ever goes. Walk it east at low tide and get the bus back from Rottingdean; in a big swell the waves come clean over the wall, which is worth checking before you set out with a pushchair.