neIntroducing the city

With a population of just under eight million, and stretching more than thirty
miles at its broadest point, London is by far the largest city in Europe. It is
also far more diffuse than the great cities of the Continent, such as Rome
or Paris. The majority of the London’s sights are situated to the north of the
River Thames, which loops through the centre of the city from west to east,
but there is no single predominant focus of interest, for London has
grown not through centralized planning but by a process of agglomeration
- villages and urban developments that once surrounded the core are now
lost within the amorphous mass of Great London. Thus London’s highlights
are widely spread, and visitors should make mastering the public transport
system, particularly the Underground (tube), a top priority.

One of the few areas of London witch is manageable on foot is

Westminster and Whitehall, the city’s royal, political and ecclesiastical
power base for several hundred years. It’s here you’ll find the National
Gallery and the adjacent National Portrait Gallery, and a host of other
London landmarks: Buckingham Palace, Nelson’s Column, Downing Street,
the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. From Westminster it’s a
manageable walk upriver to the Tate Gallery, repository of the nation’s
largest collection of modern art as well as the main assemblage of British
art. The grand streets and squares of Piccadilly, St James’s, Mayfair and
Marylebone, to the north of Westminster, have been the playground of the
rich since the Restoration, and now contain the city’s busiest shopping
zones: Piccadilly itself, Bond Street, Regent Street and, most frenetic of the
lot, Oxford Street.

East of Piccadilly Circus, Soho and Covent Garden form the heart of the
West End entertainment district, where you’ll find the largest concentration
of theatres, cinemas, clubs, flashy shops, cafes and restaurants. Adjoining
Covent Garden to the north, the university quarter of Bloomsbury is the
traditional home of the publishing industry and location of the British
Museum, a stupendous treasure house that attracts more than five million
tourists a year. Welding the West End to the financial district, The Strand,
Holborn and Clerkenwell are little-visited areas, but offer some of central
London’s most surprising treats, among them the eccentric Sir John
Soane’s Museum and the secluded quadrangles of the Inns of Court.

A couple of miles downstream from Westminster, The City – the City of

London, to give it its full title – is at one and the same time the most ancient
and the most modern part of London. Settled since Roman times, it
became the commercial and residential heart of medieval London, with its
own Lord Mayor and its own peculiar form of local government, both of
which survive, with considerable pageantry, to this day. The Great Fire of
1666 obliterated most of the City, and the resident population has dwindled
to insignificance, yet this remains one of the great financial centres of the
world ranking just below New York and Tokyo. The City’s most prominent
landmarks nowadays are the hi-tech offices of the legions of banks and
insurance companies, but the Square Mile boasts its share of historic
sights, notably the Tower of London and a fine cache of Wren churches
that includes the mighty St Paul’s Cathedral.

The East End and Docklands, to the east of the City, are equally notorious,
but in entirely different ways. Impoverished and working-class, the East
End is not conventional tourist territory, but to ignore it is to miss out the
crucial element of the real, multi-ethnic London. With its abandoned
warehouses converted into overpriced apartment blocks for the city’s
upwardly mobile, Docklands is the corner of the down-at-heel East End,
with the Canary Wharf tower, the country’s tallest building, epitomizing the
pretensions of the Thatcherite dream.

Lambeth and Southwark comprise the small slice of central London that
lies south of the Thames. The South Bank Centre, London’s little-loved
concrete culture bunker, is the most obvious starting point, while
Southwark, the city’s low-life district from Roman times to the eighteen
century, is less known, except to the gore-addicts who queue up for the
London Dungeon.
In the districts Hyde Park, Kensington and Chelsea you’ll find the largest
park in Central London, a segment of greenery which separates wealthy
West London from the city centre. The museums of South Kensington –
the Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum and Natural History
Museum – are a must, and if you have shopping on your London agenda
you may well want to investigate the hive of plush stores in the vicinity of
Harrods, superstore to the upper echelons.

Some of the most appealing parts of North London are clustered around
Regent’s Canal, which skirts Regent’s Park and serves as the focus for the
capitals’ trendiest weekend market, around Camden Lock. Further out, in
the chic literary suburbs of Hampstead and Highgate, there are unbeatable
views across the city from half-wild Hampstead Heath, the favorite parkland
of thousands of Londoners. The glory of Southeast London is Greenwich,
with its nautical associations, royal park and observatory. Finally, there are
plenty of rewarding day trips along the Thames from Chiswick to Windsor,
a region in which the royalty and aristocracy have traditionally built their
homes, the most famous being Hampton Court Palace and Windsor
Palace.

London. Historical buildings

Political, religious and regal power has emanated from Westminster and
Whitehall for almost a millennium. It was Edward the Confessor who
established Westminster as London’ s royal and ecclesiastical power base,
some three miles west of the real, commercial City of London. In the
nineteenth century, Whitehall became the “heart of the Empire”, its
ministries ruling over a quarter of the world’s populations.

The monuments and buildings from this region include some of London’s
most famous landmarks – Nelson’s Column, Big Ben and the House of
Parliament, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, plus the city’s
two finest permanent art collections, The National Gallery and the Tate
Gallery. This is a well-trodden tourist circuit for the most part - hence the
council’s decision to reinstate the old red phone boxes – with few shops or
cafes and little street life to distract you, but it’s also one of the easiest
parts of London to walk round, with all the major sights within a mere half-
mile of each other, linked by two of London’s most triumphant avenues,
Whitehall and The Mall.

Despite being little more than a glorified, sunken traffic island, infested with
scruffy urban pigeons, Trafalgar Square is still one of the London’s
grandest architectural set-pieces. London’s Trafalgar Square, the city’s
official center, features some of England’s most treasured historic
monuments. The square was laid out between 1829 and 1841 on the site of
the old royal stables and is lined on its northern side by the National
Gallery. The gallery, begun in 1824, boasts one of the finest art collections
in the world, with work from every major western artist from the 15th
through the 19th centuries. The square’s dominating landmark is a pedestal
supporting a statue of Lord Nelson, the British naval hero who defeated
Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar in Spain, in 1805. Trafalgar Square is
the location for festivities at Christmas Eve, New Year, and other major
public occasions.

Nelson’s Column, raised in 1843 and now one of the London’s best-loved
monuments, commemorates the one-armed, one-eyed admiral who
defeated Napoleon, but paid for it with his life. The statue which surmounts
the granite column is triple life-size but still manages to appear minuscule,
and is coated in anti-pigeon gel to try to stem the build-up of guano. The
acanthus leaves of the capital are cast from British cannon, while bas-
reliefs around the base are from captured French armaments. Edwin
Landseer’s four gargantuan bronze lions guard the column and provide a
climbing frame for kids to clamber over. If you can, get here before the
crowds and watch the pigeons take to the air as Edwin Lutyens’fountains
jet into action at 9am.
Keeping Nelson company at ground level, on either sides of the column,
are bronze statues of Napier and Havelock, Victorian major-generals who
helped keep India British; against the north wall are busts of Beatty,
Jellicoe and Cunningham, more recent military leaders. In the northeast
corner of the square, is an equestrian statue of George IV, which he
himself commissioned for the top of Marble Arc, over at the northeast
corner of Hyde Park, but which was later erected here “temporarily”; the
corresponding pedestal in the northwest corner was earmarked for William
IV, but remains empty.Taking up the entire north side of Trafalgar Square,
the vast but dull Neoclassical hulk of the National Gallery houses one of the
world’s greatest art collections. Unlike the Louvre or the Hermitage, the
National Gallery is not based on a former royal collection, but was begun
as late as 1824 when the government reluctantly agreed to purchase 38
paintings belonging to a Russian émigré banker, John Julius Angerstein.

Nelson’s Column, since 1843

The gallery hundred and seventy years of canny acquisition has produced
a collection of more than 2200 paintings, but the collection’s virtue is not so
much its size, but the range, depth and sheer quality of its contents. The
National Gallery’s original collections was put on public display at
Angertein’s old residence at 100 Pall Mall, until this purpose-built building
on Trafalgar Square was completed in 1838.

Around the east side of the National Gallery lurks the National Portrait
Gallery, which was founded in 1856 to house uplifting depictions of the
good and the great. Through it has some fine works among its collection of
10,000 portraits, many of the studies are of less interest than their subjects,
and the overall impression is of an overstuffed shrine to famous British
rather than a museum offering any insight into the history of portraiture.
However, it is fascinating to trace who has been deemed worthy of
admiration at any moment: warmongers and imperialists in the early
decades of this century, writers and poets in the 1930s and 40s, and,
latterly, retired footballers and pop stars. The special exhibitions, too, are
well worth seeing – and the photography shows, in particular, are often
excellent.

St James’s Park, on the south side of The Mall, is the oldest of the royal
parks, having been drained for hunting purpose by Henry VII and opened to
the public by Charles II, who used to stroll through the grounds with his
mistresses, and even take a dip in the canal. By the eighteenth century,
when some 6500 people had access to night keys for the gates, the park
had become something of a byword for prostitution. The park was finally
landscaped by Nash into its present elegant appearance in 1828, in a style
that established the trend for Victorian city parks.

Today the pretty tree-lined lake is a favourite picnic spot for the civil
servants of Whitehall and an inner-city reserve for wildfowl. James I’s two
crocodiles have left no descendants, but the pelicans can still be seen by
the lake, and there ducks and Canada geese aplenty. From the bridge
across the lake there’s a fine view over Westminster and the jumble of
domes and pinnacles along Whitehall. Even the dull façade of Buckingham
Palace looks majestic from here.

The graceless colossus of Buckingham Palace, popularly known as “Buck

House”, has served as the monarch’s permanent London residence only
since the accession of Victoria. It began its days in 1702 as the Duke of
Buckingham’s city residence, built on the site of a notorious brothel, and
was sold by the duke’s son to George III in 1762. The building was
overhauled for the Prince Regent in the late 1820s by Nash, and again by
Aston Webb in time for George V’s coronation in 1913, producing a palace
that’s about as bland as it’s possible to be.

For ten months of the year there’s little to do here, with the Queen in
residence and the palace closed to visitors – not that this deters the crowds
who mill around the railings all day, and gather in some force to watch the
“changing of the guard”, in which a detachment of the Queen’s Foot
Guards marches to appropriate martial music from St James’s Palace
(unless it rains).

Changing the guards on Buckingham Palace

Whitehall, the broad avenue connecting Trafalgar Square to Parliament

Square, is synonymous with the faceless, pi-striped bureaucracy charged
with the day-to-day running of the country. Since the sixteenth century,
nearly all the key governmental ministries and offices have migrated here,
rehousing themselves on an ever-increasing scale, a process which
reached its apogee with the grimly bland Ministry of Defence building, the
largest office block in London when it was completed in 1957. The original
Whitehall Palace was the London seat of the Archbishop of York,
confiscated and greatly extend by Henry VIII after a fire at Westminster
forced him to find alternative accommodation. Little survived the fire of
1698, caused by a Dutch laundrywoman, after which, partly due to the dank
conditions in this part of town, the royal residence shifted to St James’s.

The palace of Westminster, better known as the Houses of Parliament, is

London’s best-known monument. The “mother of all parliaments” and the
“world’s largest building” – or it was claimed at that time- it is also the city’s
finest Victorian building, the symbol of a nation once confident of its place
at the centre of the world. Best viewed from the south side of the river,
where the likes of Monet and Turner set up their easels, the building is
distinguished above all by the ornate, gilded clock tower popularly known
as Big Ben, which is at its most impressive at night when the clock-face is
lit up.
The original Westminster Palace was built by Edward the Confessor in the
first half of the eleventh century, so that he could watch over the building of
his abbey. It then served as the seat of all the English monarchs until a fire
forced Henry VIII to decamp to Whitehall. The Lords have always convened
at the palace, but it was only following Henry’s death that the House of
Commons moved from the abbey’s Chapter House into the palace’s St
Stephen’s Chapel, thus beginning the building’s associations with the
parliament.

Houses of Parliament (picture taken from the Thames river):

 Westminster Hall - virtually the only relic of the medieval palace is the
bare expanse of Westminster Hall, on the north side of the complex. First
built by William Rufus in 1099, it was saved from the 1834 fire by the timely
intervention of the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who had the fire
engines brought into the hall itself, and personally took charge of the fire
fighting. The sheer scale of the hall – 240 ft by 60 ft – and its huge oak
hammerbeam roof, added by Richard II in the late fourteenth century, make
it one of the most magnificent secular halls in Europe.

 St Stephen’s Hall and the Central Lobby - from Stephen’s Porch the
route to the parliamentary chambers passes into St Stephen’s Hall,
designed by Barry as a replica of the chapel built by Edward I, where the
Commons met for nearly 300 years until 1834. The ersatz vaulted ceilings,
faded murals statuary and huge wooden doors create a rather sterile
atmosphere doing nothing to conjure up the dramatic events that have
unfolded here. Shortly after wards the Civil War began, and no monarch
has entered the Commons since St Stephen’s also witnessed the only
assassination of a Prime Minister, when in 1812 Spencer Perceval was
shot by a merchant whose business had been ruined by the Napoleonic
wars. After a further wait the door keeper shepherds you through the
bustlink, octagonal Central Lobby, where constituents “lobby” their MPs. In
the tilling of the lobby Pugin inscribed in Latin the motto : “Except the Lord
keep the house, they labour in vain that build it”.

 Big Ben - is a 13.5-ton bell, tolls the hours in the clock tower of the
Houses of Parliament. The original palace on the site of the Houses of
Parliament was largely destroyed by fire in 1834. The current building was
completed in 1852.

 The House of Commons – if you’re heading for the House of

Commons, you’ll be ushered into a small room where all visitors sign a
form vowing not to cause a disturbance; long institutional staircases and
corridors then lead to the Strangers’s Gallery, rising steeply above the
chambers. Since an incendiary bomb in May 1941 destroyed Barry’s
original chamber, what you see now is rather lifeless reconstruction by
Giles Gilbert Scott, completed in 1950. Members of the cabinet occupy the
two “front benches’; the rest are “backbenchers”.

 The House of Lords – On the other side of the Central Lobby a

corridor leads to the House of Lords (or Upper House), a far dozier
establishment, peopled by unselected Lords and Ladies, both hereditary
and appointed by successive Mps, and a smattering of bishops. Their
home boasts a much grander décor than the Commons, full of regal gold
and scarlet, and dominated by a canopied gold throne where the Queen
sits for the state opening of parliament in November.

 The royal apartments – if the House of Lords takes your fancy, you
can see pomp and glitter by joining up with a guided tour. You’ll be asked
to meet at the Norma Porch entrance below Victorian Tower, where the
Queen arrives in her coach for the state opening. Then, after the usual
security checks, you’ll be taken up the Royal Staircase to the Norman
Porch itself, every nook of which is stuffed with busts of eminent
statesmen.

 Jewel Tower and the Victoria Tower Garden – the Jewel Tower,
across the road from parliament, is a remnant of the medieval palace. The
tower formed the southwestern corner of the exterior fortifications (there’s a
bit of moat left, too), and was constructed by Edward III as a giant strong-
box for the crown jewels. On the other side of the road are the rather more
attractive and leafy Victoria Tower Gardens, which look out onto the
Thames.

Westminster Abbey is the oldest and most famous of the great churches of
London. There has been a place of worship on its site since the seventh
century when, according to legend, Saint Peter consecrated a church that
had been founded in his name. The present structure is the result of
rebuilding begun by Henry III in 1245, which continued intermittently until
1745. Many British monarchs have been crowned in the Abbey since the
coronation of Harold II in 1066, and the church holds the tombs of many
kings and queens, including Edward the Confessor; Elizabeth I; Mary,
Queen of Scots; and Henry VII. The Abbey also honors poets, politicians,
and war heroes, including the "Unknown Soldier" who fought in World War
I.

Founded in 1897 with money from Sir Henry Tate, inventor of the sugar
cube, the Tate Gallery does its best to perform a difficult dual function as
both the nation’s chief collections of British art and its primary gallery for
international modern art.

The Tate hosts some of London’s best art exhibitions and every autumn
sponsors the Turner Prize, the country’s most prestigious modern art prize.
In particular, the role of the Saatchis, the advertising magnates who sit on
the Tate’s committee of patrons, has been called into question. Prime
movers in the art world, they are in a position to manipulate the art market
through the Tate and their own gallery of modern art, thus wielding undue
influence over the promotion of certain artists for their own financial
benefict.

Westminster Abbey
To the west of Vincent Square, just off Victoria Street, you’ll find one of
London’s most surprising churches, the stripey neo-Byzantine concoction
of the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. Begun in 1895, it is one of
the last and wildest monuments to the Victorian era: constructed from more
than 12 million terracotta-coloured bricks, decorated with hoops of Portland
stone, it culminate in a magnificent tapered campanile which rises to 274
feet.

Anonymous and congested it may be, but Piccadilly Circus is, for many
Londoners, the nearest their city comes to having a centre. A much-altered
product of Nash’s grand 1812 Regent Street plan, and now a major traffic
bottleneck, it is by no means a picturesque place, despite a major clean-up
in recent years. It’s probably best seen at night when the spread of
illuminated signs gives it a touch of Las Vegas dazzle, and when the
human traffic flow is at its most frenetic

Although it has declined in popularity today, the tradition of afternoon tea

has been a part of English life since the 18th century. The most formal
afternoon tea is served at grand hotels, such as the Ritz on London's
Piccadilly Circus. Here, thin sandwiches of cucumber, watercress, or
smoked salmon are served with a range of teas from China and India,
followed by sweet pastries, or scones served with jam and cream.
Traditional afternoon tea is also served in quaint country teashops, which
are found throughout England

Afternoon Tea at the Ritz

As wealthy Londoners began to move out of the City in the eighteenth

century in favour of the newly developed West End, so Oxford Street – the
old Roamn road to Oxford – gradually replaced Cheapside
Oxford - The towers and spires of Oxford lure students and travelers from
around the world to south central England. Situated near the confluence of
the Rivers Thames and Cherwell, this site was settled by Saxon traders in
the 10th century. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which logs the country’s
history from the beginning of the Christian era, first mentions Oxford in 912.

This historic English city seats the 12th-century University of Oxford, the
country’s first university and one of the world’s most esteemed places of
learning. Rhodes scholars, outstanding foreign students selected from the
Commonwealth of Nations, the United States, South Africa, and Germany,
study at the University of Oxford for two years. Today this university enrolls
more than 13,000 students and has more than 35 individual colleges.

The heart of Oxford, known as Carfax, derives its name from the Latin
quadrifurcua, which means “four-forked”. This refers to the four points of
the compass—the direction of the city’s main streets. Walls surrounding
ancient Carfax helped the city withstand attacks by the Danes during the
10th and 11th centuries. By the mid-13th century Oxford had become a
major educational center, and the university attracted leading scholars and
students from throughout Europe.

Oxford University

To the north of Oxford Street lies Marylebone, once the outlying village of
St Mary-by-the-Bourne. Sights in this part of town include the massively
touristed Madame Tussaud’s and the Planetarium , on Marylebone Street
Road, the low-key galleries of the Wallace Collection, and Sherlock
Holmes’old stamping grounds around Baker Street. There is a pleasure,
though, in just wandering the Marylebone streets, especially the vilage-like
quarter around Marylebone High Street.(See in the picture)

Cambridge, located on the River Cam north of London, is important as a

center of learning and is the seat of the University of Cambridge, one of the
great educational institutions of Europe. It is also a market center for the
surrounding agricultural region and manufactures electronic equipment and
precision instruments.

Cambridge has many outstanding edifices, including the Church of Saint

Benet, a 10th-century Saxon structure; the restored Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, one of the four round Norman churches in England; and the
15th-century King’s College Chapel, one of the finest examples of Gothic
architecture in Europe. The many museums and galleries here include the
Fitzwilliam Museum, featuring both archaeological and art collections.

Cambridge University

The 15th-century King’s College Chapel is one of the grandest buildings in

the university town of Cambridge, and possibly all of England. The building,
conceived by Henry VI, is spectacular for its high vaulted roof, lofty spires,
great buttresses, and magnificent stained-glass windows. King’s College is
one of the oldest in the university, dating back to the 1440s. It forms part of
the town’s main line of colleges, including Queen’s, Trinity, and Magdalene,
through whose landscaped lawns and gardens the picturesque River Cam
winds its way.

Situated in the heart of London, the royal borough of Kensington and

Chelsea is chiefly a residential district and has several fashionable
shopping areas, such as Kensington High Street and the King's Road.In
the late 17th century, Nottingham House, in Kensington, became a royal
residence. It was later remodeled by the architect Sir Christopher Wren and
became known as Kensington Palace. The palace is still the residence of
the royal family, but it is open to the public.

Also in Kensington are the British Museum; the Victoria and Albert
Museum; the Science Museum; the Natural History Museum; the Royal
Colleges of Science, Art, and Music; and the Royal Albert Hall. Founded in
1753, the British Museum is one of the world's oldest and most
comprehensive museums, with artifacts ranging from Egyptian mummies to
Roman treasures.
The historic fortress known as the Tower of London was built on the
remains of Roman fortifications on the north bank of the River Thames. The
original tower, known as the White Tower or Keep, is flanked by four turrets
and enclosed by two lines of fortifications. It was built about 1078 by
Gundulf, bishop of Rochester. The inner fortifications, called the Ballium
Wall, have 12 towers, including Bloody Tower, Record or Wakefield Tower,
Devereux Tower, and Jewel Tower.

The tower was used as a royal residence as well as for a prison until
Elizabethan times. It is now largely a showplace and museum. It holds the
crown jewels of England and is one of the country’s greatest tourist
attractions. A popular feature is the Yeomen of the Guard, known as
Beefeaters, who still wear colorful uniforms of the Tudor period.

Tower of London

The name Hyde Park is derived from the manor of Hyde, which once
belonged to the abbot of Westminster. Prominent features of the park are
The Serpentine, Rotton Row, the Pets’ Cemetery, and Marble Arch, the
meeting place of soapbox orators. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was a
fashionable park where royalty rode and drove, military reviews were held,
and duels were fought.

The Royal Court Theater is a landmark of London’s Kensington and

Chelsea District, a center for the city’s artistic and cultural set. The Royal
Court specializes in modern and avant-garde productions, such as John
Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, which premiered here in 1956. Beginning at
Sloane Square, Kensington and Chelsea’s main street, King’s Road,
stretches along the north bank of the Thames. During the 18th and 19th
centuries, the area was jammed with the tiny cottages of London’s working
class. From 1830, the neighborhood became an extremely fashionable
place to live. Kensington and Chelsea’s Sloane Street and King’s Road
feature dozens of expensive shops and restaurants, while the streets
running down to the Thames embankment contain many elegant Georgian
and Queen Anne houses dating to the 18th and 19th centuries.

From the 16th century onward, royalty and courtiers lived at Kew, which
was conveniently located close to Richmond Palace. Kew Palace, a Dutch-
style house now within Kew Gardens, is the only survivor of several royal
residences—George III and Queen Charlotte lived here. The gardens,
originally developed by several 18th-century queens with a passion for
landscape and botany, were passed over to the nation in 1840 as the Royal
Botanic Gardens. The stately Hampton Court Palace, built in the early 16th
century, soon became the residence of Henry VIII, and remained a royal
residence for more than two centuries.

The royal residence of the British monarchs since the Middle Ages,
Windsor Castle adorns the north bank of the River Thames about 35
kilometers (about 20 miles) west of London in the ancient town of Windsor.
William the Conqueror originally chose this site for a fortress in the 11th
century, after his triumph at the Battle of Hastings. Over the next eight
centuries, various monarchs transformed and altered the castle into a 5-
hectare (13-acre) royal spread.

The dominant feature of Windsor Castle is its 16th-century stone Round

Tower, which divides the castle into two courts, called the Lower Ward and
the Upper Ward. The Lower Ward, to the west, holds Albert Memorial
Chapel as well as the Perpendicular-style Saint George’s Chapel, a royal
mausoleum and the site of the annual installation of the Knights of the
Garter. The Upper Ward contains the State Apartments, the royals’ living
quarters and guest apartments. The celebrated Throne Room and the
Waterloo Chamber are among the rooms open for tours. In November 1992
the State Apartments were the site of a raging fire that left several
apartments gutted but spared most of the priceless art collection housed
there.
Home Park, which contains the Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert, adjoins Windsor Castle on the south, east, and north. The larger
Great Park borders the castle grounds to the south. Across the Thames lies
the town of Eton, home of prestigious Eton College, founded by Henry VI in
1440.