The collection
The Thames · A city built on tidal water
Walk 20 minutes in London and you cross 4 centuries without meaning to. The City of London still runs on its medieval street pattern, lanes and courts too narrow for the towers now standing over them, and the Thames Path gets you between quarters along the water rather than through traffic. The city reads in layers rather than landmark to landmark: a Tudor church behind an office block, a Georgian square behind a glass tower.
London began as Londinium, a Roman trading post founded around AD 47 on the north bank of the Thames. The Romans walled it, and the City of London still keeps roughly to that line — the square mile that now holds the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange. In September 1666, the Great Fire burned nearly all of the medieval city inside those walls to the ground in 4 days, and London rebuilt on the same street plan. Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul's on the burnt site, and it took until 1710 to finish. The river is why the city is here at all. It stays tidal as far as Teddington Lock, rising and falling by as much as 7 metres through the centre of town, twice a day. London Bridge carried the only crossing here for close to 1,700 years, until Putney Bridge opened in 1729. London was the world's largest city for most of the 19th century, and it is governed now as 32 boroughs and the City of London, 33 councils in all.
Built as a townhouse for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703, the palace became the monarch's official London residence in 1837, when Victoria came to the throne. It holds 775 rooms and the largest private garden in London, and the State Rooms open to the public for most of the summer.
William the Conqueror began the White Tower, the keep the whole castle is named after, around 1078 — 12 years after the Norman conquest, and to hold a city he had already taken. The Tower has been an armoury, a royal mint and a prison, and the Crown Jewels have been kept here since the 1660s.
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Mayfair
Brook Street since 1856, black-and-white marble underfoot, and afternoon tea under the Chihuly chandelier in the Foyer.
Westminster Abbey has been the coronation church since 1066, and 40 coronations have been held here. It holds an estimated 18 monarchs among the more than 3,300 people buried inside it, and Henry III began the present building in 1245.
Christopher Wren's cathedral opened in 1710, replacing the medieval one that burned in the Great Fire — itself begun in 1087, after an earlier fire, on a site that has carried a cathedral since AD 604. The dome rises 111 metres and was the tallest point in London for 253 years, from 1710 until 1963.
Founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759, it was the world's first public national museum, built around the collection of the physician Hans Sloane. It now holds some 8 million objects, and the permanent collection is free to walk into.
The clock tower everyone calls Big Ben was finished in 1859 and formally renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012, though the nickname belongs to the bell inside rather than the tower itself. It stands 96 metres tall, with 334 steps from the ground to the belfry, above the Houses of Parliament on the bank of the Thames.
A short list of extraordinary places to stay.
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