Stretching for more than thirty miles at its broadest point,
London is by far the largest city in Europe. The majority of
its sights are situated to the north of the River Thames, which
loops through the city from west to east. However, 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 Greater London.
One of the few areas that you can easily explore on foot is
Westminster and Whitehall , the city's royal, political and
ecclesiastical power base, where you'll find the National Gallery
and a host of other London landmarks, from Buckingham Palace to
Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. The grand streets and squares of
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.
East of Piccadilly Circus, Soho and Covent Garden are
also easy to walk around and form the heart of the West End
entertainment district, containing the largest concentration of
theatres, cinemas, clubs, flashy shops, cafés and restaurants. To
the north lies the university quarter of Bloomsbury , home
to the ever-popular British Museum, and the secluded quadrangles of
Holborn's Inns of Court, London's legal heartland.
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 is now one of the
world's great financial centres, yet retains its share of historic
sights, notably the Tower of London and a fine cache of Wren
churches that includes St Paul's Cathedral. Despite creeping
trendification, the East End , to the east of the City, is
not conventional tourist territory, but to ignore it entirely is to
miss out a crucial element of contemporary London. Docklands
is the converse 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 enjoying a new
lease of life thanks to its proximity to the new Tate Gallery of
Modern Art in Bankside, which is linked to the City by a new
pedestrian bridge.
The largest segment of greenery in central London is Hyde Park,
which separates wealthy Kensington and Chelsea from the city
centre. The museums of South Kensington - the Victoria &
Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum -
are a must; and if you have shopping on your agenda, you'll want to
check out the hive of plush stores in the vicinity of Harrods.
The capital's most hectic weekend market takes place around
Camden Lock in North London . Further out, in the literary
suburbs of Hampstead and Highgate, there are unbeatable views
across the city from half-wild Hampstead Heath, the favourite
parkland of thousands of Londoners. The glory of South
London is Greenwich, with its nautical associations, royal park
and observatory (not to mention its Dome). Finally, there are
plenty of rewarding day-trips along the Thames from Chiswick to
Windsor , most notably Hampton Court Palace and Windsor
Castle.