How to Get to Hyde Park

Pay a visit to London's largest central Royal Park

Hyde Park is one of London's premiere green spaces, with locals and visitors alike enjoying the outdoors since it was opened to the public in 1637.

Today it's the ideal place to have a picnic, kick or ball, or simply wander - while the history of the park is as diverse as the 900 plant varieties that its super-nursery grows each year!

• 1536 King Henry VIII created Hyde Park in 1536, after seizing the land from Westminster Abbey so that he could hunt wild boar and deer.

• The park's famous sandy path, Rotten Row, was created by William III in the 1690s and was the first artificially lit road in London.

• Queen Caroline split the park in two in 1728, creating Kensington Gardens and dividing the original lake into the Serpentine in the east park and the Long Water in the west.

• In 1851, the park hosted The Great Exhibition, a massive global trade and culture fair for which the famous Crystal Palace was built.

• Speakers' Corner was established in 1872, and has served as a platform for prominent figures like Karl Marx and George Orwell.

• Hyde Park is home to an unofficial, hidden pet cemetery originating from 1881, containing over 300 miniature graves.