The belvedere
After 154 steps Bath and its hills open out beneath you, with the view reaching towards Wales on a clear day.
Daderot — Public domain · Derek Harper — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Derek Harper — CC BY-SA 2.0
A man with more money than he knew what to do with built a 47-metre tower on an empty hilltop so he could read in it alone. That is Beckford's Tower in a sentence: not a castle, not a church, but a vertical library raised for William Beckford, author of the Gothic novel Vathek and one of the richest men in England, and finished by the architect Henry Goodridge in 1827. Every morning Beckford rode up from his house in Lansdown Crescent, above the city, along a private ride he had laid out for himself, sat among his books and treasures at the top, and rode back down. The gilded lantern on the summit catches the sun from all over the city, which is why so many visitors ask about it from a distance before they learn its name. The Bath Preservation Trust has owned it since 1993, and it reopened in June 2024 after a restoration costing around £3.9 million, funded largely by the National Lottery, that went on to win a Georgian Group award in 2025. The first-floor museum is small but tightly done: pieces of Beckford's furniture and collection, his turbulent life story, and a frank account of the fact that the family fortune came from Jamaican sugar plantations worked by enslaved people. The place does not flinch from that, and it is better for it. The real reason to come is the belvedere. A tight spiral of 154 steps ends at one of the widest views over Bath and the surrounding hills; on a clear day the view reaches towards the Severn and the Welsh hills. The climb needs sound knees and is no place for a pushchair, and even the museum entrance is up a flight of stairs; only the ground floor and the Tower Vault are step-free, and the vault has a digital binocular tour for anyone who cannot go up. After Beckford died in 1844 the land around the tower became Lansdown Cemetery, and his pink-granite tomb stands there, so a wander among the old headstones is part of the visit. Be realistic about timing. The tower opens at weekends only (Saturdays, Sundays and bank-holiday Mondays) from mid-February to mid-December, closing at 16:00 rather than 17:00 from November, last entry is half an hour before closing, and it shuts completely from mid-December to mid-February. Admission is £10 for adults, free for under-18s with an adult, and the ticket converts into an annual pass. The site sits 3 km north of the city centre on Lansdown Road; the car park has only three spaces, so the nearby Lansdown Park & Ride (a 10 to 15 minute walk) or bus 31 from Milsom Street is the sensible way up. Allow an hour to ninety minutes, and do not expect anything else to see nearby.
After 154 steps Bath and its hills open out beneath you, with the view reaching towards Wales on a clear day.
Beckford's furniture and treasures, and the story of a fortune built on sugar plantations, told without varnish.
Beckford's pink-granite tomb among old headstones on the quiet hilltop that wraps around the tower.
Lansdown Road, Bath BA1 9BH
With a full day in Bath and a car, yes, for an hour to ninety minutes; nothing else in the city gives you that view. With toddlers or a pushchair, skip it: the stair is long and narrow, there is no lift, and there is nothing else nearby. And remember it opens at weekends only, so a Monday-to-Friday visit to Bath will find it shut.