Where to Stay & Eat in Bath
Which area fits your trip, and where the good, honestly priced food actually is.
Bath is small enough that you can’t really go wrong with location, but the right area still depends on what kind of trip you’re having. Here’s an honest breakdown of where to stay, and where to eat once you’re there.
Where to stay, by area
City Centre
The Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, Pulteney Bridge and the best concentration of restaurants and nightlife all sit within a compact central area. It’s the natural choice if this is your first trip and you want everything within an easy walk, and Bath’s genuinely small scale means even “central” here is a manageable size, unlike a bigger city’s downtown.
Around the Royal Crescent
Staying uphill near The Circus or the Royal Crescent means a genuine climb on the way home each time, but rewards you with quieter streets and some of the best views in the city. Good for a slower-paced trip, or a return visit once you’ve already covered the centre on a previous trip.
Bathwick
Across Pulteney Bridge from the centre, Bathwick is quieter and handsome, still an easy walk into town while offering a distinctly different, more residential character. The Holburne Museum and several well-regarded restaurants, including the Bathwick Boatman’s riverside setting, make it worth the short walk over.
Where to eat
The city centre holds the widest choice, with more spread across Bathwick, Camden and Walcot if you want to walk a little further for something quieter. The Pulteney Arms does proper, affordable pub classics, fish and chips and steak and ale pie among them, without the tourist markup that clusters right around the Abbey and Roman Baths.
Sally Lunn’s, in the city’s oldest house, is the obvious historic pick, home of the Sally Lunn bun since the 17th century, worth the inevitable queue at least once. For something more formal, The Olive Tree, the city’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, is the pick for a proper occasion, book well ahead. Ponte Vecchio and Sotto Sotto both come up repeatedly for good Italian food, the former for its riverside view of Pulteney Bridge.
A note on getting around
Bath is small enough to walk between all of these areas without needing transport, the whole city centre sits within about a 15-20 minute walk end to end. The main thing to plan for is the hills, particularly the climb up to the Royal Crescent, genuinely steeper than it appears on a map.
That’s everything I’ve got.
A note before you plan around this: prices, opening hours, booking requirements and admission details in this guide were correct at the time of writing, but venues change these often and sometimes without notice. Always check directly with the attraction or its official website before you travel or build a schedule around a specific time or price.
Before travelling to any destination featured on this site, please also check your government’s latest travel advice, as safety situations, entry requirements and travel warnings can change.
