Central London on foot: where to stay if you'd rather walk

If you want to see London on foot, stay in Covent Garden, Marylebone or Mayfair. All three are in Zone 1, each puts a major gallery, a park and a good dinner within a short walk, and none needs a Tube ride to reach the West End.

Covent Garden: closest to everything

This is the base for people who want to walk to the theatre and back. Trafalgar Square is at the bottom of St Martin's Lane, Somerset House is on the Strand, and the Royal Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet and Opera, is on Bow Street. When your feet give out, there are more Tube lines within a short walk than you'll ever need, the Elizabeth line at Tottenham Court Road among them, so the ride home is short.

The downside is noise. The piazza draws crowds from mid-morning and the lanes round Seven Dials stay busy late, so ask for an upper floor or an apartment at the back. Choice is thin as well, since we list only a handful of residences here and they're the priciest of the three areas. Food is never a problem, though: there are more places to eat within a few minutes of a Covent Garden apartment than in any other area we cover, and Dishoom on Upper St Martin's Lane is the obvious breakfast before a long day on foot. A good walking loop crosses the Strand into the courtyard of Somerset House, follows the river west to Trafalgar Square, runs the length of St James's Park to Buckingham Palace and comes back up through Green Park, without a ticket or a train anywhere in it.

Marylebone: calmer, and cheaper

Marylebone suits walkers who like a peaceful evening. Marylebone High Street has Daunt Books, a large Waitrose and, on Sunday mornings, the farmers' market in the Cramer Street car park, and the Wallace Collection on Manchester Square is free and seldom crowded. Regent's Park is to the north, Oxford Street to the south, and Soho is about 20 minutes on foot. It's the best value of the three, with residences starting from about £165 a night. The catch is distance from the theatres: a show in Covent Garden is a pleasant half-hour walk there and, for most people, a short Tube or cab ride back. A Marylebone day might mean being at the Wallace Collection when it opens, lunch on the High Street and an afternoon in Regent's Park.

Mayfair: parks on two sides

Mayfair suits walkers who like some green between appointments. Hyde Park is to the west and Green Park to the south, while Berkeley Square, Grosvenor Square and Mount Street Gardens break up the streets in between. The Royal Academy is on Piccadilly with Burlington Arcade beside it, and Covent Garden is roughly 25 minutes east on foot. It goes calm after 10pm, which suits most people who choose it, and with thirty-odd residences it offers the widest choice of the three. A Mayfair day could start at the Royal Academy, drift through Burlington Arcade and along Piccadilly, and finish with a long walk across Hyde Park to the Serpentine.

Kensington, Knightsbridge and Chelsea look central on a map but aren't walking bases for the West End. They're excellent for the South Kensington museums and Hyde Park, but a theatre evening means the Piccadilly or District line each way, and if most of your plans sit between Trafalgar Square and Oxford Circus, the places that make sense are all east of Park Lane.

Whichever area you choose, don't rely on the postcode, because an address in W1 can still be a 15-minute walk from the places you care about. Ask for the exact street and map the walk to the three places you'll visit most. Almost every residence passes the basic test of a short walk to a station.