Sure, everyone loves a good pub garden, but whether you’re clutching a lukewarm pint or a posh cocktail, everything tastes better at a rooftop bar. If you’ve been sticking to ground level boozing, prepare to have your head turned, because London’s ever-expanding skyline is the ideal backdrop for drinks with added oomph – not to mention killer Instagram fodder.

It’s time to conquer that vertigo and see the city in its best light, with this guide to the UK capital’s rooftop bars. Don’t assume these gems are just summer haunts either – winter rooftop drinking is the height of cool.

The Best Rooftop Bars In London

Culpeper Roof Garden

Once inner London’s best-kept secret, this pint-sized fourth-floor terrace a stone’s throw from Old Spitalfields Market is now hot property. The saving grace is that they take bookings, so you can (quite literally) nab a patch for you and your mates among fresh herbs and veg, much of which is used in the cocktail and downstairs gastropub menu.

What To Instagram: Up your cornichon content with a shot of Culpeper’s giant glowing gherkin, set against its skyscraper equivalent of 30 St. Mary Axe. Between a rock and a hard pickle, basically.

40 Commercial Street, E1 6LP theculpeper.com

Jin Bo Law

One of the city’s newest openings, Jin Bo Law is the Dorsett City Hotel’s 14th-floor bar, with views into the past and future: 18th-century church St. Botolph’s on one side and the Gotham-like architecture of The City on the other. Come for the visual delights, but stay for the unique Asian-inspired cocktail menu, awash with soju, shochu and umeshu.

What To Instagram: The Milk & Cookies cocktail – a glorious white chocolate concoction with Daijinjo sake, vanilla milk and bitters served in a glass carton. Your average white Russian this is not.

9 Aldgate High Street, EC3N 1AH jinbolaw.co.uk