From its rather plain, castellated exterior, you'd never guess that Syon House contains the most opulent eighteenth-century interiors in the whole of London. The splendour of Robert Adam's refurbishment is immediately revealed, however, in the pristine Great Hall, an apsed double cube with a screen of Doric columns at one end and classical statuary dotted around the edges. There are several more Adam-designed rooms to admire in the house, plus a smattering of works by van Dyck, Lely, Gainsborough and Reynolds.

While Adam beautified Syon House, Capability Brown laid out its gardens (daily 10am-5pm; £3) around an artificial lake, surrounding the water with oaks, beeches, limes and cedars. The gardens' chief focus now, however, is the crescent-shaped Great Conservatory , an early nineteenth-century addition which is said to have inspired Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace. Those with young children will be compelled to make use of the miniature steam train which runs through the park at weekends from April to October, and on Wednesdays during the school holidays.

Another plus-point for kids is Syon's Butterfly House (daily: May-Sept 10am-5.30pm; Oct-April 10am-3.30pm; £3.30; www.butterflies.org.uk), a small, mesh-covered hothouse, where you can walk amid hundreds of exotic butterflies from all over the world, as they flit about the foliage. An adjoining room houses a collection of iguanas, millipedes, tarantulas and giant hissing Tanzanian cockroaches.

If your kids show more enthusiasm for life-threatening reptiles than delicate insects, then you could skip the butterflies and go instead for the adjacent London Aquatic Experience (daily: April-Sept 10am-6pm; Oct-March 10am-5pm; £3.50; www.aquatic-experience.org), a purpose-built centre with a mixed range of aquatic creatures from the mysterious basilisk, which can walk on water, to the perennially popular piranhas.

Mid-March to Oct Wed, Thurs & Sun 11am-5pm; £6, including gardens www.syonpark.co.uk. Bus #237 or #267 from Gunnersbury tube station or Kew Bridge train station.

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