London - The City Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - The City

The City is where London began, and judging from the harried look of its working population, it ain’t over yet. Nowhere is the contrast stronger between weekday and weekend, or even between lunch and supper. During the week thousands storm into the Square Mile to deal with billions of other people’s money, fortunes are made or broken with a few megabytes in massive offices, and then come Saturday it all might never have happened: the place is left to the coach parties and tourists, a gigantic modern ghost town sprinkled with empty little churches. The grand exception is St Paul’s Cathedral, its great stone interior always echoing with sightseers or worshippers, its dome one of the most beautiful, symbolic landmarks in London and a spectacular view point. Some idea of what has been going down as well as up all around its prime position over the centuries can be discovered at the excellent Museum of London, while next door the Barbican Centre provides another cultural oasis for live performances of a consistently high standard. As well as the wealth of architecture old and new, other sights worth seeking out are the Bank of England Museum, the Guildhall Art Gallery, and just outside the City proper, the ancient medieval fortification of the Tower of London and the flamboyant 19th-century Tower Bridge.

Sights

T 020-7236 4128, http://www.stpauls.co.uk. 0830-1600 Mon-Sat. £7 including Cathedral, Crypt and Galleries, £3 under-16s. Guided tours Mon-Sat 1100, 1130, 1330, 1400. Adult £2.50, £1 under-16s. Audio guide £3.50. Recitals 1700 Sun. Free. M St Paul’s.

At least the fifth church on the site, St Paul’s was started in 1675, took about 35 years to complete and was paid for with taxes raised on coal and wine coming into the Port of London. Hemmed in on all sides over the centuries, Wren’s relatively colossal church still inspires awe and wonder. A massive cleaning project inside and out has been undertaken and the redevelopment of Paternoster Square has opened up new views of the place, reflecting its Portland stone in plate-glass office blocks, while the Millennium Bridge now provides a neat approach from the South Bank riverside and Tate Modern. Wren had originally hoped to build a church in the form of a Greek cross, but this plan, and his desire to top it with a dome rather than a steeple, were vetoed. Instead he settled on the more traditional Latin cross for the ground plan, and then carried on the building work in such secrecy that no one could complain before his vision, including the dome, was substantially in place. He could see the work in progress from his house across the river (still standing next to the reconstructed Globe Theatre). The final result is a kind of mini version of St Peter’s in Rome, much less flamboyantly decorated, and one of the most successful Classical interpretations of Gothic in the world.

Twenty-two wide steps lead up to the West Front, looking down Ludgate Hill, with its double portico containing a bas-relief depicting the conversion of the tax-collector Paul. At the apex stands St Paul himself, the patron saint of the City of London, with St Peter on his right and St James on his left. Behind is the Great Dome, invisibly supported with reinforced concrete and a chain of steel after it was discovered that Wren’s builders had skimped on the use of solid stone for the supporting columns. Inside, the massive nave of the Cathedral is wonderfully vast and bare. In fact most of the decoration was only added in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and not very well at that. It’s definitely well worth climbing up the long, wide wooden spiral staircase to the Whispering Gallery, around the base of the inner dome, decorated with statues of Early Church Fathers and painted scenes from the life of St Paul. People press their ears to the wall here hoping to catch what their friends are whispering on the other side. Unfortunately the hubbub from far below often drowns out the famous effect. Several steep and narrow flights of stone steps with regular resting places then lead up to the Stone Gallery outside, where the views through the balustrade are quite spectacular. In order to look west from here, though, it’s necessary to brave the extraordinary series of vertiginous cast-iron spiral stairways heading up to the Golden Gallery. The tremendous wrap-around open-air views from the cramped little balcony up here easily rival those from the London Eye.

Back in the main body of the Cathedral, unmissable sights include the choir, gorgeously carved by Grinling Gibbons; Henry Moore’s sculpture of Mother and Child in the north choir aisle; the copy of Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World in the north transept; a small display on the firewatch that saved the building during the Blitz; and the American Memorial Chapel at the very east end of the church in the apse, consecrated to the memory of over 28,000 US servicemen based in Britain who died in the Second World War.

Crowds of other sightseers can be avoided by arriving first thing in the morning during the week.

150 London Wall, T 020-7600 3699, events T 020-7814 5777, http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk. Mon-Sat 1000-1750, Sun 1200-1750. Free. Café: Mon-Sat 1000-1730, Sun 1130-1730. M St Paul’s.

Bang in the middle of a busy roundabout, on the site of a Roman fort, is the excellent, purpose-built Museum of London. Opened in 1976, it has a refreshing visual approach to the social history of the city, illustrating the daily lives led here down the ages with a combination of genuine artefacts, reconstructions and canny design.

After the atmospheric and recently renovated introductory rooms, featuring London before London, it really gets into its stride with Roman London, and a reconstruction of a wealthy Roman’s house and a cache of 43 gold coins dating from AD65-170 discovered in a hole in the floor of Plantation House, just off Eastcheap. The Dark Age and Saxon galleries are inevitably quite scant in artefacts, but the Medieval and Tudor galleries beyond make up the deficit with carvings, astonishing jewellery, armour and more coins set amid excellent scale models of how a few important buildings may have looked before that defining event in the city’s history, the disastrous Great Fire. Downstairs the story of the city’s rebuilding, expansion and growth up to the 20th century continues around the Garden Court and the sumptuously decorated Lord Mayor’s Coach, still used annually for the Lord Mayor’s Show.

T 020-7638 8891; enquiries T 020-7638 4141. 1000-1800 Mon, Tue, Thu-Sat; 1000-2000 Wed; 1200-1800 Sun. M Barbican or Moorgate.

Between Aldersgate and London Wall rears the immense, famously disorientating and surprisingly popular 1970s housing complex called the Barbican, one of the City’s very few residential enclaves. Somewhere in here it’s usually an enjoyable challenge looking for the Barbican Centre, with its vibrant galleries, cinemas, music halls and theatres. Be sure to allow plenty of ‘ticket time’.

Guildhall Yard, T 020-7332 1632, recorded info T 020-7332 3700, http://www.guildhall-art-gallery.org.uk. Mon-Sat 1000-1700, Sun 1200- 1600, £2.50, concessions £1. M St Paul’s.

The gallery does a fine job of displaying the Corporation of London’s large art collection – several pieces are of local topographical interest – in purpose-built premises next to the ancient Guildhall. Beneath the gallery, a Roman amphitheatre from the second century AD was unearthed during construction of the gallery and has been preserved for public perusal.

Threadneedle St, T 020-7601 5491. 1000-1700 Mon-Fri. Free. M Bank.

The Bank of England occupies the entire north side between Prince’s Street, Lothbury, Threadneedle Street (hence its nickname ‘the old lady of Threadneedle Street’) and Bartholomew Lane where visitors are welcomed free of charge into the museum. The centrepiece is a reconstruction of Sir John Soane’s original stock office, with six other rooms telling the history of the Bank since 1694 entertainingly enough, including a couple of real gold bars and a pyramid of replicas. There’s also the opportunity to chance your arm with a three-minute spot of simulated foreign exchange trading. Here the Great Motivator gets all the respect it deserves.

Mon-Wed, Fri 1000-1800, Thu 1000-1900. M Bank.

Opposite the Bank, the 19th-century Royal Exchange building stands on the site of London’s original ‘bourse’, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1565. The fine quadrangle and arcardes at its heart now provide shop space for a wide variety of super-luxury retailer and a few quirky one-offs.

M Bank.

Heading east from Bank, Cornhill leads up to Gracechurch Street. Tucked away to the left off Gracechurch Street is the Leadenhall Market, a superb Victorian cast-iron covered market. Not really a street market any more, it now houses some fine food shops and cafés that are always packed at lunchtimes. North and east from here towards Liverpool Street the City really means business. Beyond the gleaming Lloyd’s Building and Tower 42 (the former NatWest tower), behind Liverpool Street Station, stands the enormous Broadgate Centre. In its massive scale, snappy shops and American confidence it makes interesting comparison with the quaint old Leadenhall Market. Nearby on St Mary Axe, on the site of the old Baltic Exchange, badly damaged by an IRA bomb in 1992, the latest major alteration to the City’s skyline looks like a giant glass artillery shell but has been fairly affectionately nicknamed ‘the gherkin’. Designed by Sir Norman Foster, and occupied by insurance company Swiss Re, it makes the marginally taller Tower 42 look positively dowdy.

Recorded info T 0870 756 6060, advance booking T 0870 756 7070, switchboard T 0870 751 5177, http://www.tower-of-london.org.uk or http://www.hrp.org.uk. Mar-Oct 0900-1700 Mon-Sat, 1000-1700 Sun; Nov- Feb 1000-1600 Mon, Sun, 0900-1600 Tue-Sat. £13.50 (various combined, group and family prices, phone for details). Free Yeoman Warder tours (1 hr) every 30 mins from 0925, (Sun, Mon from 1000), last tour 1530. Meeting point: Lanthorn. M Tower Hill.

Londoners traditionally dislike the Tower of London, dismissing it as a tourist trap. In fact it’s less a trap than a treat, making an enormous effort to elucidate its wealth of historical associations and bring the old buildings to life for their two and a half million or so visitors each year. Inevitably the gate pressure means that the castle and its grim story come across a bit like a sanitized medieval theme park, but the central place it occupies in the royal heritage and history of Britain and its capital is impossible to deny. Outside Tower Hill tube a viewing platform overlooks the relatively massive fortification, a classic photo-opportunity for an overall picture of the layout of the place and its many towers, with Tower Bridge and the river in the background. In the middle stands the original fortress, the White Tower, one of the first, largest and most complete Norman keeps in the country, surrounded at a respectful distance by smaller buildings erected over the last 900 years. With some justification, the Tower claims to be several tourist attractions in one and for clarity’s sake divides itself into seven colour-coded areas, each taking a suggested 20 or 30 minutes to see: the Western Entrance and Water Lane, the Medieval Palace, the Wall Walk, the Crown Jewels, Tower Green, the White Tower, and the Fusiliers’ Museum.

Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - The City
		Flights Cheap flights to any destination worldwide click here		Car Rental Compare prices for worldwide car rental click here		Hotels Lowest prices on over 60,000 hotels worldwide click here		Travel Insurance Compare Travel Insurance prices click here