Street art tours, from Comuna 13 to the Belfast gables.
Which Comuna 13 tour goes up with someone who lives there. What an hour of Wynwood costs from a golf cart. Whether Belfast needs a black taxi or a pair of shoes. Reviews of the mural and street art tours you can book, in any city that paints.
Five walls people plan whole trips around.
The wall tours more travellers book than any others, what each one costs, and what you are actually looking at.
01The one everybody meansComuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street FoodEscalators up the hillside, hip-hop houses, and paintings that took over from the headlines. Take the version that includes the cable car.
02Painted historyMurals Taxi TourA black taxi along the Falls and the Shankill, with a driver who will tell you which gable belonged to whom.
03The East End, on footStreet Art and Graffiti Guided Walking TourTwo hours of Shoreditch alleys where the paste-ups turn over weekly and the guide knows which piece went up on Tuesday.
04Tiles, then sprayStreet Art TourLisbon hands muralists whole tower blocks. This walk takes in the commissioned giants and the stencils nobody approved.
05Miami, sitting downWynwood Graffiti Golf Cart Small-Group TourForty-odd warehouse walls in an hour, in the shade, on a cart. Wynwood covers more ground than it looks from the corner.
Miami, Bushwick, Nashville: pick your American wall city.
The USA does this by the district rather than the city. Each of these packs its painting into a few blocks, which is why the tours are short and why so many of them are driven.
Six countries that hand their walls to painters.
A Medellin hillside, Belfast gable ends, Lisbon tower blocks, the legal walls of Berlin, Miami warehouses, and the Mexican muralists who started all of it.
Graffiti tours go where the commissions do not.
Writers’ walls, trainline embankments, legal halls and the alleys that get buffed every fortnight. A graffiti tour is the one that explains tags, throw-ups, and why the best piece on the street is on a roof nobody can reach.
The most booked street art tours on earth.
Every mural tour we have reviewed →More travellers take these than any other wall tour, and no two of them earn it the same way.
1
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
Review of Medellín’s Comuna 13 tour with cable cars, graffiti, coffee, street food, public transit, and a rooftop drink for $18.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Xochimilco, Coyoacan, Frida Kahlo Museum & Murals Tour
from $89
3
Streetart Museum STRAAT Entrance Ticket
from $25
4
Murals Taxi Tour
from $51
5
Wynwood Graffiti Golf Cart Small-Group Tour
from $45
6
Street Art and Graffiti Guided Walking Tour
from $33
7
Street Art Tour
from $40
8
Belfast’s Political Mural Taxi Tour
from $48
Street art walking tours: the format that still wins.
A wall rewards walking pace. You stop where the guide stops, get close enough to read the spray edges and the paste-up seams, and cover the six streets that are actually worth the afternoon.
Three walls that exist nowhere else.
Painted alleys are everywhere now. A hillside that answered a war with colour, a warehouse district bought up by a developer with taste, and gable ends that map a city house by house are not.
Comuna 13
The barrio on the western hillside was the hardest place in the city, and the paintings went up afterwards, on the walls of the houses the fighting happened in. Outdoor escalators now carry you up six flights of the hill, past the pieces, with hip-hop crews working the landings. Guides who grew up there will point out which panel is about which year.
- 1Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 9,046 reviews
- 2Comuna 13 Tour with Snacks And Your Own Graffiti★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 311 reviews
- 3Comuna 13 and Graffiti Guided Tour with a Local★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 239 reviews
Wynwood Walls
A developer bought a block of dead Miami warehouses and treated the blank sides as canvases, inviting painters city by city until the whole district followed. The core is curated and gets repainted, most heavily each December, so the wall in your photograph may already be somebody else’s. Carts and small groups cover it faster than legs do.
- 1Wynwood Graffiti Golf Cart Small-Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,646 reviews
- 2Wynwood Art District 1-Hour Street Art Tour by Golf Cart★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 492 reviews
- 3Wynwood Art District 1-Hour Wynwood Buggies Street Art Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 289 reviews
The Belfast gables
Nowhere else paints its politics at this scale or keeps it up this long. The gable ends of the Falls and the Shankill carry memorials, flags and claims, some of them thirty years old and maintained like graves. The newer peace-line pieces were commissioned to say something calmer, and the tours are honest about which is which.
- 1Belfast’s Political Mural Taxi Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,180 reviews
- 2Private Black Taxi Cab Political Murals Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 425 reviews
- 3Political Wall Murals and Peacewall★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 247 reviews
Lisbon gives a muralist the whole tower block.
The city hands over ten-storey gable ends and lets artists cut faces straight into the plaster. The tiles get the postcards; the spray is up the hill behind Graça, and on the concrete along the river.
Every Lisbon wall walk →
Mexico was painting murals before anyone said street art.
Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros put a revolution on government staircases in the 1920s and argued that painting belonged outdoors where people walk past it. A century later a Mexico City guide can take you from those staircases to fresh spray in the Roma in one afternoon.
- 1Xochimilco, Coyoacan, Frida Kahlo Museum & Murals Tourfrom $89
- 2Cancun Street Food Tour with Food Stalls, Local Market and Muralsfrom $64
- 3ART NACO : Murals & Street Art Bike Tourfrom $60
Belfast paints its history. London repaints every week.
Everything in the UK →
Two different jobs share one island. A Belfast mural is a document, and the guide is usually behind a steering wheel. In London and Glasgow the walls turn over so fast that the photo that sold you the street is already out of date.
- 1Murals Taxi Tourfrom $51
- 2Street Art and Graffiti Guided Walking Tourfrom $33
- 3Belfast’s Political Mural Taxi Tourfrom $48
The gable ends, by black taxi
The murals along the Falls Road and the Shankill were painted as claims, memorials and warnings, and most drivers grew up on one side of them. You stop, you get the story, you get back in out of the rain.
Shoreditch, at walking pace
Brick Lane and the streets off it are a rolling exhibition with no curator. Guides here spend their week walking the same six blocks, which is the only way to know what is new and what has been painted over.
The city-centre mural trail
Glasgow put a set of large commissioned murals through the centre and joined them into a walk. It is the tidiest introduction to the form in Britain, and it stays interesting in bad weather because the pieces are big.
What a wall tour actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Most of the best walks come in under the entry fee for the museum round the corner.
Two-hour walks, gallery entries, and the tip-based free tours where the guide is worth more than the fee.
Half-days by bike, tuk-tuk or cart, spray workshops with the paint included, and the mural-and-food combinations.
A private guide, a car and driver for the day, and the artist-led sessions you leave holding a canvas from.
Rain, repaints, and the piece that came down last week.
A mural tour is an outdoor walk past surfaces nobody promised to keep. Legal walls are painted over on a cycle, festival pieces last a season, and two hours of Berlin drizzle is a long time on a pavement. The answer is a roof: a collection indoors, a spray hall, or something with a canopy over it.
Four wall tours that will not wait.
Most street art can be found on the day with a decent map and an afternoon. These four run on small groups, artist diaries and doors that lock.
- 01Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street FoodThe groups worth taking are small and led by people who live on the hillside. In high season they are gone a week out.
- 02Streetart Museum STRAAT Entrance TicketThis one is a hall, not a street: it keeps opening hours, sells timed entry and shuts on some weekdays.
- 03Brooklyn Graffiti Workshop with Local ArtistA spray session needs a booked wall, paid-for paint and an artist who is free. None of that gets arranged on the morning.
- 04Wynwood Graffiti Golf Cart Small-Group TourCarts and small groups are capped, and the district is at its fullest in December while the walls are being repainted.
By city — where the paint is
Lisbon, Berlin, Belfast, Medellin, Miami: the run painters actually argue about.
The newest mural tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Brisbane: Small Bars and Street Art Tour with a Drink
Read our review →
Brussels Comics & Street Art: Private Walking Tour
Read our review →
Black Taxi-Style Tour: Murals, Peace Walls & City Highlights
Read our review →
