It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsize Park to the south and is surrounded from the northeast by Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland.

With some of the most expensive housing in London, Hampstead has had many notable residents, both past and present, including King Constantine II of Greece and his wife Queen Anne Marie, Helena Bonham Carter, Agatha Christie, T. S. Eliot, Jon English, Sigmund Freud, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Jim Henson, George Orwell, Harry Styles and Elizabeth Taylor.

Archeological findings from Hampstead Heath, including Mesolithic flint tools, pits, postholes, and burnt stones, indicate a hunter-gatherer community around 7000 BCE.

Objects like cinerary urns and grave goods discovered near Well Walk, dating back to 70–120 CE, suggest the possibility of a Roman settlement or road in the vicinity.

[4]Early records of Hampstead can be found in a grant by King Ethelred the Unready to the monastery of St. Peter's at Westminster (AD 986), and it is referred to in the Domesday Book (1086)[5] as being in the Middlesex hundred of Ossulstone.

In the 1960s, the figure of the Hampstead Liberal was notoriously satirised by Peter Simple of the Daily Telegraph in the character of Lady Dutt-Pauker, an immensely wealthy aristocratic socialist whose Hampstead mansion, Marxmount House, contained an original pair of Bukharin's false teeth on display alongside precious Ming vases, neo-constructivist art, and the complete writings of Stalin.

During the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 75% of voters across the London Borough of Camden voted to remain in the EU.

The Heath, a major place for Londoners to walk and "take the air", has three open-air public swimming ponds; one for men, one for women, and one for mixed bathing, which were originally reservoirs for drinking water and the sources of the River Fleet.

Local activities include major open-air concerts on summer Saturday evenings on the slopes below Kenwood House, the FT Weekend Festival,[14] book and poetry readings, fun fairs on the lower reaches of the Heath, period harpsichord recitals at Fenton House, Hampstead Scientific Society and Hampstead Photographic Society.

The largest employer in Hampstead is the Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, but many small businesses based in the area have international significance.

George Martin's AIR recording studios, in converted church premises in Lyndhurst Road, is a current example, as Jim Henson's Creature Shop was before it relocated to California.

The area has some remarkable architecture, such as the Isokon building in Lawn Road, a Grade I listed experiment in collective housing, once home to Agatha Christie, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Walter Gropius.

St Stephen's Rosslyn Hill (Church of England) was built in 1869 by Samuel Sanders Teulon on the Pond Street side of Hampstead Green.

In 1998 it was leased to the St Stephen's Restoration and Preservation Trust which, after 11 years of fundraising and grants returned it to the community as a centre for education, weddings, public meetings and social celebrations together with occasional classical music concerts.

The Catto Gallery has been in Hampstead since 1986 and has represented artists like Ian Berry, Philip Jackson, Chuck Elliott, Walasse Ting, and Sergei Chepik over the years.

After over a decade of controversy and legal action from local residents, McDonald's was finally allowed to open in Hampstead in 1992, after winning its right in court, and agreeing to a previously unprecedented re-design of the shop front, reducing the conspicuousness of its facade and logo,[54] It closed in November 2013.

[55] Popular local eateries also include street food vendors, such as La Creperie de Hampstead, which is often frequented by domestic and global celebrities.

Hampstead's rural feel lends itself for use in film, a notable example being The Killing of Sister George (1968) starring Beryl Reid and Susannah York.

[57] Outdoor scenes in The Wedding Date (2005), starring Debra Messing, feature Parliament Hill Fields on the Heath, overlooking west London.

A musical specifically focusing on the area, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1968), tells the story of a young man's cycle journey around Hampstead.

In February 2016, principal photography for Robert Zemeckis' war film Allied starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, began with the family home located on the corners of Christchurch Hill and Willow Road in Hampstead.

Hampstead has long been known as a residence of the intelligentsia, including writers, composers, ballerinas and intellectuals, actors, artists and architects – many of whom created a bohemian community in the late 19th century.

After 1917, and again in the 1930s, it became base to a community of avant garde artists and writers and was host to a number of émigrés and exiles from the Russian Revolution and Nazi Europe.