90 places · every place verified by us
Palaces and castles, Roman remains, wool churches, gardens, steam trains and farm parks. Here are the places worth planning a day around, with what they cost in 2026.
90 places
Museums and galleries · Broadway
A museum of the furniture designer Gordon Russell in one of his former workshops on Russell Square, Broadway, open Tuesday to Sunday, with a ticket that lasts a year.
Rainy days
Verified Nov 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Winchcombe
The ruins of a Cistercian abbey near Winchcombe, founded in 1246, once a place of pilgrimage, now open for booked tours on the first weekend of each month.
Walker-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Uley
A Neolithic chambered long barrow at least 5,000 years old on the Cotswold edge above Uley, 37m long, with chambers you can go into by torchlight; free in daylight and in English Heritage's care.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Parks and gardens · Chipping Campden
Lawrence Johnston's Arts and Crafts garden near Chipping Campden, a series of garden rooms begun in 1907 and owned by the National Trust since 1948.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly · EV charging
Verified Oct 2026
Parks and gardens · Tetbury
The gardens at Highgrove, near Tetbury, open by booked guided tour from spring to early autumn, with tours that include lunch or tea.
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Lechlade-on-Thames
William Morris's country home by the upper Thames near Lechlade, which he rented from 1871 until 1896, with its rooms, gardens and his grave nearby.
Walker-friendly · Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Parks and gardens · Chipping Campden
A garden near Chipping Campden made by three generations of women gardeners, close to Hidcote, with a bluebell wood and free parking.
Verified Nov 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Lacock
The National Trust's abbey made from a medieval nunnery, where Fox Talbot made the earliest surviving photographic negative in 1835, with its museum and village.
Car-free · Dog-friendly · EV charging
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Northleach
John 'Crump' Dutton's seventeenth-century grandstand for deer coursing near Northleach, which the National Trust calls the only one left in England, open on a few days a year, with the Sherborne estate's walks and water meadows open daily.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Witney
The ruins of a fifteenth-century manor house by the River Windrush between Burford and Witney, with a round dovecote, free to visit in daylight.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Parks and gardens · Bisley
The seventeenth-century garden of Miserden Park, between Stroud and Cirencester, with some of the longest mixed borders in private hands, a yew walk and a loggia by Lutyens. Closed for winter until April 2027.
Verified Oct 2026
Museums and galleries · Stroud
Stroud's free museum in a seventeenth-century house in Stratford Park, with a walled garden and a café, closed on Mondays and for a few weeks in winter.
Rainy days · Car-free · Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Museums and galleries · Cirencester
A craft centre in Cirencester's old brewery buildings, with free exhibitions of contemporary craft, a shop of British makers' work, makers' studios, the Blend café and over 100 weekly courses and workshops.
Rainy days · Dog-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Wotton-under-Edge
A Tudor hunting lodge of about 1550 on the edge of a valley above Ozleworth, near Wotton-under-Edge, restored by the American architect Bob Parsons and now the National Trust's, with a three-level garden, 700 acres and wide views.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Breweries and distilleries · Moreton-in-Marsh
A family-run brewery on Ditchford Farm at Stretton-on-Fosse, between Moreton-in-Marsh and Shipston-on-Stour, brewing since 1999, with a shop and bar open on weekdays and Saturday mornings.
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Woodstock
The remains of one of the larger courtyard villas of Roman Britain, by the River Evenlode west of Woodstock, free in daylight all year, with its early fourth-century mosaic shown on volunteer open days from May to September.
Dog-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Uley
An open Neolithic chambered tomb at Coaley Peak on the Cotswold edge, its roofless chambers laid bare, free to visit, with parking alongside, picnic tables and views over the Severn vale.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Parks and gardens · Painswick
An eighteenth-century pleasure garden restored from a painting of 1748, with snowdrops in late winter, a café and dogs welcome on short leads.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
Tours and experiences · Ampney Crucis
A small family vineyard at Poulton, between Cirencester and Fairford, planted in 2010, with summer vineyard tours, winter tastings and a cellar door shop.
Verified Nov 2026
Sport and activity · Winchcombe
The Bugatti Owners' Club's hill climb course near Gotherington, between Cheltenham and Winchcombe, holding competitions since 1938, with spectator events from spring to November.
Verified Nov 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Painswick
The home of a Benedictine community since 1928 on the wooded hillside at Cranham, between Painswick and Gloucester, with a monastery shop and café open daily, a chapel open for quiet prayer and footpaths across the estate.
Verified Oct 2026
Museums and galleries · Stow-on-the-Wold
A gallery of contemporary British painting, sculpture and prints on Church Street, Stow-on-the-Wold, with more than 200 original works on two floors and changing exhibitions, open every day.
Rainy days
Verified Oct 2026
Historic houses and heritage · Tetbury
An Arts and Crafts house built from 1909 to 1929 by Ernest Barnsley and local craftsmen, with an eight-acre garden of outdoor rooms, open in summer.
Verified Nov 2026
Sport and activity · Cirencester
The Real Outdoor Xperience, formerly South Cerney Outdoor: a 47-acre lake in the Cotswold Lakes with paddleboarding, kayaking, sailing, open-water swimming and high ropes.
Family-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
Blenheim Palace at Woodstock, a World Heritage Site and Churchill's birthplace, is the grandest; its ticket lasts a year. Sudeley Castle near Winchcombe, where Katherine Parr is buried, opens daily from mid-March to the start of November. Snowshill Manor, Charles Wade's house of curiosities, and Lacock Abbey, where Fox Talbot made the earliest surviving negative, belong to the National Trust. Kelmscott Manor, William Morris's country home, opens from April to October. Our guide to country houses and castles has the opening days for each.
Cirencester's Corinium Museum shows Roman mosaics from a town and district where more than 90 are known, and its amphitheatre, which held about 8,000 people, is free to walk into. Belas Knap, a Neolithic long barrow above Winchcombe, is free and open in daylight. Our guide to the Roman Cotswolds goes on to Chedworth.
The wool churches are free and open most days: Chipping Campden, Northleach with its merchants' brasses, Fairford with its complete set of medieval glass, and Cirencester's great porch on the Market Place.
The Cotswold Wildlife Park near Burford, Birdland and the Model Village at Bourton-on-the-Water, and Adam Henson's Cotswold Farm Park near Guiting Power are the family favourites. The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway runs steam trains between Cheltenham Race Course and Broadway from spring to late autumn. More ideas are in the Cotswolds with children, and for a wet day, the Cotswolds on a rainy day. Our Cotswolds weekend with children fits the Farm Park, Bourton and the Wildlife Park into two days.
Hidcote, near Chipping Campden, is one of the best-known Cotswold gardens, and Kiftsgate Court is close by. Painswick Rococo Garden was restored from a painting of 1748, and Westonbirt, the National Arboretum near Tetbury, is open every day but Christmas Day. See our guide to the great gardens.
Many of the best things cost nothing: the Museum in the Park at Stroud, the Oxfordshire Museum at Woodstock, the Athelstan Museum at Malmesbury, Cirencester's amphitheatre, Minster Lovell Hall, the Tolsey at Burford and every circular walk the Cotswolds National Landscape publishes. Our short walks and half-day walks are a good place to start, and our Strange Things stories find the oddest corners. Our guides to free things to do in the Cotswolds and the best viewpoints have the full lists.
The big days out are the Cheltenham Festival, four days of jump racing in mid-March; the Badminton Horse Trials in early May; the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in July; and the Moreton Show, an agricultural show near Moreton-in-Marsh, in early September. Around the late May bank holiday, Chipping Campden holds Robert Dover's Olimpick Games and the Scuttlebrook Wake, and Tetbury its Woolsack Races on the bank holiday Monday. Check each organiser’s date before you go.
For music, the Chipping Campden Music Festival fills St James's Church for a fortnight in May, and the Guiting Music Festival brings ten days of concerts to Guiting Power at the end of July. From November, Blenheim and Westonbirt open their Christmas light trails; our guides to when to visit and Christmas in the Cotswolds have the rest of the year.
In September, Heritage Open Days open private houses, chapels, museums and town halls free for ten days, from Cirencester to Witney.
Region by region, see things to do in the North Cotswolds, the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, Cirencester and the Coln Valley, Stroud and the Five Valleys, the Cotswold Edge and the South Cotswolds. For a plan that takes in most of them, our touring route by car is a three-day loop from Burford.
Free to see from the path or the street, from Arlington Row to the top of Cleeve Hill.
Sight · Historic building · Bibury
Arlington Row is a terrace of stone cottages above the mill stream in Bibury, built as a wool store in the late fourteenth century and turned into weavers' homes in the seventeenth. Grade I and owned by the National Trust, the cottages are lived in and seen from the path.
Sight · Historic building · Chipping Campden
The open arcade of 1627 in the middle of Chipping Campden's High Street, built by Sir Baptist Hicks as a sheltered market for butter, cheese and poultry, saved from sale to America in the 1940s and now the National Trust's. Grade I; the Cotswold Way starts beside it.
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · The Oxfordshire Cotswolds
The Rollright Stones are three prehistoric monuments on a ridge on the Oxfordshire and Warwickshire border, built over nearly 2,000 years: the Whispering Knights burial chamber of about 3800 BC, the King's Men circle of about 2500 BC and the King Stone. Open daily; small fee.
Sight · Monument · Wotton-under-Edge
The Tyndale Monument is the tower on Nibley Knoll above North Nibley, built in 1866 by S. S. Teulon in memory of William Tyndale, translator of the first printed English New Testament. Grade II*; usually open to climb, free, with a key nearby if locked.
Sight · Common or park · The Cotswold Edge
Gloucestershire’s largest common: more than 400 hectares of open limestone grassland on the Cotswold Edge above Cheltenham, with the highest point of the Cotswolds at 330m, an Iron Age hillfort, a Bronze Age cross dyke and views to the Malverns and the Black Mountains.
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · Painswick
Painswick Beacon is a hill north of Painswick, about 280m high, crowned by a large Iron Age hill fort with triple ramparts. Royalist troops camped here in 1643. It is open common land on the Cotswold Way, shared with a golf course, with views over the Severn Vale.
Racing, eventing, an airshow, a country show and the Christmas light trails.
Event · Cheltenham Racecourse, Prestbury ·
Four days of jump racing at Cheltenham Racecourse in mid March, with 28 races and the Gold Cup on the Friday; the 2027 Festival runs from Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 March.
Event · Badminton House park, Badminton ·
Five days of eventing in the park of Badminton House in early May, with dressage, cross-country on the Saturday and show jumping; in 2027 from Wednesday 5 to Sunday 9 May.
Event · RAF Fairford ·
Three days of military and civil aircraft on the ground and in the air at RAF Fairford each July; in 2027 from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 July, with under-18s free with an adult.
Event · The showground, Batsford Estate, Moreton-in-Marsh ·
The north Cotswolds' agricultural show, on a Saturday in early September on the Batsford Estate near Moreton-in-Marsh, with livestock, horses and free entry for children; next on Saturday 4 September 2027.
Event · Dover's Hill, Weston Subedge, Chipping Campden ·
Shin-kicking, tug of war and running races on Dover's Hill above Chipping Campden on the Friday evening after the late May bank holiday, games first held in 1612.
Event · Blenheim Palace, Woodstock ·
A light trail of more than a million lights through the gardens and grounds of Blenheim Palace, with Cinderella told in the State Rooms, from mid November to early January.
What is open, what is on and what is in season, about once a month.
For most first visits, a walk between villages such as Bourton-on-the-Water and the Slaughters, with a great house such as Blenheim, Sudeley or Snowshill Manor.
Walk, visit the wool churches, the Roman amphitheatre at Cirencester and Minster Lovell Hall, and the free museums at Stroud, Woodstock and Malmesbury.
The Cotswold Wildlife Park, Birdland and the Model Village at Bourton, the Cotswold Farm Park and the steam railway.
What is on, what is new and what is in season in Cotswolds Info, in your inbox about once a month.