UK Edition
‘It’s like a beautiful version of New York and Dubai combined, with a British touch’
As businesses depart, the district's only hope is to rebrand itself as a tourist destination
Did you hear? London has a new tourist district. It is packed with the best restaurants in town, Manhattan-style rooftop bars, immersive art exhibitions and a world-class museum. There’s only one catch. It’s Canary Wharf.
This week HSBC announced it would be departing its office in London’s financial district for a smaller, more suitable space in the City of London now that the workforce has taken to hybrid working.
The HSBC workers have apparently taken to calling their Canary Wharf headquarters the “tower of doom”, and the district certainly attracts mixed emotions among London’s residents as well. After emerging from the mud in the 1980s, part of Margaret Thatcher’s vision to turn London into the financial centre of the world, Canary Wharf is barely visited by the 8.9 million people who call London home.
To Londoners it is that cluster of skyscrapers over there, with a blinking light at the top of One Canada Square’s pyramid roof. For years, to get there, you had to board a Legoland train (the DLR, before the Jubilee and Elizabeth Line sped things up) so most Londoners didn’t bother. Why go anyway? All it offered was concrete, water and office space.
But things are changing. With other businesses predicted to make similar moves to HSBC in years to come, the Canary Wharf Group has no choice but to pivot away from business and towards a new market entirely. Tourists. The process is already underway.
The first stage of the project, 35 years ago, was to build these imposing skyscrapers and fill them with banks and other businesses. Indeed the Telegraph was resident of Canary Wharf from 1987 until 2006. Stage two of the project was to expand the residential community of the area (3,500 people now live in the central Canary Wharf area).
And stage three? Stage three is getting the tourists in, and the project could become even more relevant now that one of the district’s leading businesses is on the way out. But it won’t be easy. Because how do you turn the most corporate, concrete, soulless corner of the city, five miles from Trafalgar Square, into a place that people actually want to come and visit? I went to find out what Canary Wharf 3.0 has to offer.
Kendall Roy would hang out here
Canary Wharf may be in the process of rebranding itself as a lifestyle destination, but the majority of businesses here still cater for bankers or its residents, who are also primarily bankers.
At the Lunch Market (open every Thursday during the summer; 12–2.30pm) there are a dozen street food trucks selling things like biryani, paella, Malaysian noodles. Drake blasts out of a stereo somewhere, while high net-worth men’s suit trousers get hot in the sun. If Kendall Roy was going to hang out anywhere in London, it would probably be here. Or actually he’d be in one of the area’s exclusive hotel rooftop bars, looking down on it all.
But not all the hotels fit that mould. Across a footbridge into the Wood Wharf Area I find Tribe (doubles from £140). This lifestyle hotel brand, which opened in August 2022, is going against the grain in that it is the first in the area that isn’t designed solely for business travellers.
In the laid-back foyer there are craft beers being served in a bar decorated with hanging plants. This is the cousin of the boutique-style Hoxton hotels, and it has a similar atmosphere.
“Guest experience is a priority for us,” says Filipe Avillez, general manager. “We are design led and the quality of the product is at a very high standard.”
There are plenty of business visitors staying here in the week, but Avillez says he has noticed more tourists coming through too.
“Back in the day Canary Wharf closed at 5.30 and everyone went home, but not anymore. There are more activities, the businesses opening are fun and quirky. I think the strategy is to keep people on the estate, which makes sense.” Since 2019, there are now 50 percent more visitors over evenings and weekends. Whatever they’re trying to do here, it does appear to be working.
Reminders of a bygone era
Walking along the pedestrianised docks of Canary Wharf and through its finely manicured Jubilee Gardens is perfectly pleasant, but it is also as far from the true London experience as you can get. The soul of London lies in its history and culture, the ghosts of kings, Victorians and Romans are found around every corner. In Canary Wharf there is the unavoidable feeling of being somewhere built solely from money. And glass.
But that wasn’t always the case. At West India Quay, just across the way from Cabot Square, I find the Museum of London Docklands (entry free) set in an old sugar warehouse. It tells the story of the district’s history as a port, and lays bare the docks’ links to the Atlantic slave trade, with one section of the museum leading you through fascinating re-creations of how the area would have looked two centuries ago, before being ripped up in the Eighties and replaced by the high-rise structures of today.
From the past, to the future, my next stop is Illusionaries (£38 for a 40min experience), an immersive art space with a rotating exhibition of digital works. The first, Memories of a Dead Poet by Arash Irandoust (running until September 24), is a hallucinogenic journey with 2D animation reminiscent of the Monty Python era, with almost comically grotesque religious iconography. The narrative is set across three rooms, with a mirrored corridor connecting them. Having opened on June 29, the day of my visit, this is the most hyped new attraction in the area.
I ask Salar Nouri, creative director at Illusionaries, whether he thinks Canary Wharf has a future as a tourist destination.
“I think it already is. This place has changed massively over the past 10 years. When a lot of tourists come to Canary Wharf, they don’t believe what they’re seeing here. It’s like a beautiful version of New York and Dubai combined, with a British touch.”
A spritz with a view
All of that psychedelic art makes for thirsty work, so as the workers head out for after-work drinks I cross the curving South Quay Footbridge to find the high-end rooftop bar of Bokan, which promises the best views of London. It is, indeed, a fine view, offering a rare perspective of the capital from an eastern vantage point, while the spiked summit of One Canada Square looms large behind. As I sip my aperol spritz I wonder: would I really recommend the area to a tourist?
There is certainly a lot more going for it than when I last visited a decade or so ago. There’s an entire underground city of shops here, with over 300 retailers at 97 per cent occupancy – far higher than your average British high street.
There are more than 70 cafes, bars and restaurants in Canary Wharf, including some of London’s best small chain offerings like Dishoom, Hawksmoor and Mercato Metropolitano. You have the new paradisiacal rooftop gardens above the Elizabeth Line station, and the wider Canary Wharf area has partnered with the Eden Project to make things feel more green.
There’s fun to be had, too. This is the only place in London where you can enter a floating hot tub with a glass of bubbles in hand (Skuna Boats; £32 per person). Minigolf, a paradise of fairground games (Fairgame) and the Platform retro gaming bar are among the other whacky experiences on offer for kidults.
So, on paper (the expensive, weighted sort, with a serif header and a footer) Canary Wharf really does have everything.
But then again, as I look back from this rooftop bar towards central London, with its hotchpotch skyline, black street lamps, buskers, corner pubs and cobbled streets all hidden from view, I can’t shake the feeling that Canary Wharf lacks something fundamental. Blink, and you could be in any modern high-rise city on Earth. No amount of investment will ever change that.