Trafalgar Square
It's the heart of visitors' London, beating with tour
buses, cameras and flocks of persistent pigeons. On
the square's northern edge is the cash-strapped National
Gallery, which has one of the world's most impressive
art collections. Famous paintings include Cézanne's The
Bathers and van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding.
Entry to the gallery is free, which means if you feel
like dropping in and looking at just one or two pictures,
you can do so at your leisure without feeling obliged
to cover extensive territory.
Also in the vicinity are the National Portrait
Gallery, a place to see lots of faces from the
Middle Ages to modern times, and St Martin in
the Fields, with an adjoining craft market and
a brass-rubbing centre in the crypt.
Westminster Abbey
The resting place of the royals, Westminster Abbey
is one of the most visited churches in the Christian
world. It's a beautiful building, full of morose tombs
and monuments, with an acoustic field that will send
shivers down your spine when the choirboys clear their
throats. The roll call of the dead and honoured is
guaranteed to humble the greatest egoist, despite the
weighty and ornate memorabilia. In September 1997,
millions of people round the world saw the inside of
the Abbey when TV crews covered Princess Di's funeral
service. Since then the number of visitors has increased
by 300%, and the visit is now more restricted, with
some areas cordoned off. One of the best ways to visit
the abbey is to attend a service; the atmosphere and
acoustics at evensong are awesome and inspiring.
Houses of Parliament
The awesome neo-Gothic brilliance of the Houses of
Parliament has been restored thanks to a spring clean
of the facade. The building includes the House of
Commons and the House of Lords, so the grandeur
of the exterior is let down only by the level of debate
in the interior ('hear, hear'). There's restricted
access to the chambers when they're in session, but
a visit around 6pm will avoid the worst of the crowds.
Check the time on the most recognisable face in the
Houses of Parliament, Big Ben.
Nearby, Downing St, the official residence
of the prime minister (no 10) and the chancellor of
the exchequer (no 11), has been guarded by an imposing
iron gate since the security forces realised that the
lone iconic bobby outside Maggie's door was not sufficient
to stop the IRA mortar bomb attack in 1989.
Tate Britain
The Tate Britain is the keeper of an impressive historical
archive of British art. Built in 1897, the Tate underwent
an ambitious program of expansion, the Centenary Development,
completed in November 2001. Ten new galleries and five
refurbished galleries showcase the collection of peerless
Blakes, Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, Hogarths, Constables,
Turners and Pre-Raphaelite beauties and provide space
for temporary exhibitions and educational projects.
Its sister gallery, the Tate Modern,
opened in May 2000, is housed in the former Bankside
Power
Station. The Tate Modern displays the Tate's collection
of international modern art, including major works
by Bacon, Dalí, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko and
Warhol, as well as work by more contemporary artists.
The building is as exciting as the art: gorgeous industrial-strength
red brick with a 325ft-high (99m-high) chimney. The
former turbine hall, below street level and running
the length of the vast building, now forms the awe-inspiring
entrance to the gallery.
Buckingham Palace
The Queen opened Buckingham Palace to the public for
the first time in 1993 to raise money for repairs to
Windsor Castle. The interiors range from kitsch to
tasteless opulence and reveal nothing of the domestic
life of the Royal Family apart from a gammy eye when
it comes to interior decor. The changing of the guard
is a London 'must see' - though you'll probably go
away wondering what all the fuss was about.
Not far off and definitely worth a stroll is St
James's Park, which is the neatest and most royal
of London's royal parks. St James's Palace is
the only surviving part of a building initiated by
the palace-mad Henry VIII in 1530. Just near the
park's northern edge is the Institute for Contemporary
Art, a great place to relax, hang out and see
some cutting-edge film, dance, photography, theatre
and art.
Covent Garden
Once a vegetable field attached to Westminster Abbey,
Covent Garden became the low-life haunt of Pepys, Fielding
and Boswell, then a major fruit and veg market (immortalised
in My Fair Lady, and is now a triumph of conservation
and commerce. The car-free piazza is surrounded by
designer gift and clothes shops, hip bars and restaurants.
Stalls selling overpriced antiques and bric-a-brac
share the arcaded piazza with street theatre, buskers
and people-watchers. To the northeast of the piazza
is the redeveloped Royal Opera House.
British Museum
The most trafficked attraction in Bloomsbury, and
in the entirety of London, is without a doubt the British
Museum. It is the oldest, most august museum in the
world, and as part of the millennium celebrations received
a well-earned rejig with Norman Foster's glass-roofed
Great Court. The museum is so big and so full of 'stuff'
collected (read: stolen?) by Victorian travellers and
explorers that visitors often make the mistake of overdosing
on the antiquities. See as much as you want to see,
not as much as you believe you should. Highlights include
the weird Assyrian treasures and Egyptian mummies;
the exquisite pre-Christian Portland Vase and the 2000-year-old
corpse found in a Cheshire bog. With the removal of
the British Library to St Pancras, the Reading Room
is now open to the public, sadly making Reader's tickets
a thing of the past.
Bloomsbury is a peculiar mix of the University of
London, beautiful Georgian squares and architecture,
literary history, traffic, office workers, students
and tourists. Its focal point, Russell Square,
is London's largest square.
St Paul's Cathedral
Half the world saw the inside of St Paul's Cathedral
when Charles and Di tied the knot here in 1981. The
venerable building was constructed by Christopher Wren
between 1675 and 1710, but it stands on the site of
two previous cathedrals dating back to 604. Its famous
dome, the biggest in the world after St Peter's in
Rome, no longer dominates London as it did for centuries,
but it's still quite a sight when viewed from the river.
Visitors should talk low and sweetly near the whispering
gallery, which reputedly carries words spoken close
to its walls to the other side of the dome.
Victoria & Albert
Museum
The Victoria & Albert
Museum, on Cromwell Rd in South Kensington, has an
eclectic mix of booty gathered together
under its brief as a museum of decorative art and design.
It sometimes feels like an enormous Victorian junk
shop, with nearly four million artefacts on display.
It's best to browse through the collection whimsically,
checking out the Chinese ceramics, Japanese swords,
cartoons by Raphael, sculpture by Rodin, the Frank
Lloyd Wright study and the pair of Doc Martens.
Also on Cromwell Rd, the Natural History Museum is
one of London's finest Gothic-revival buildings, but
even its grand cathedral-like main entrance can seem
squashed when you're confronted with hordes of screaming
schoolkids. Keep away from the dinosaur exhibit while
the kids are around and check out the mammal balcony,
the Blue Whale exhibit and the spooky, moonlit rainforest
in the ecology gallery.
Camden Markets
The huge Camden Markets could be the closest England
gets to free-form chaos outside the terraces of football
stadia. They stretch between Camden and Chalk Farm
tube stations, incorporating Camden Lock on the Grand
Union Canal, and get so crowded on weekends that you'll
think you're in the Third World. The markets include
the Camden Canal Market (bric-a-brac, furniture and
designer clothes), Camden Market (leather goods and
army surplus gear) and the Electric Market (records
and 1960s clothing).
After Camden Market, the colourful Portobello Market is
London's most famous (and crowded) weekend street market
and is best seen on a Saturday morning before the gridlock
sets in. It's full of antiques, jewellery, ethnic knick-knacks,
second-hand clothes and fruit and veg stalls. Starting
near the Sun in Splendour pub in Notting Hill, it wends
its way northwards to just past the Westway flyover.
Hyde Park
Humongous Hyde Park used to be a royal hunting ground,
was once a venue for duels, executions and horse racing,
and even became a giant potato field during WWII. It
is now a place of fresh air, spring colour, lazy sunbathers
and boaters on the Serpentine. Features of the park
include sculptures by Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore
and the Serpentine Gallery, which holds temporary
exhibitions of contemporary art.
Near Marble Arch, Speaker's Corner started
life in 1872 as a response to serious riots. Every
Sunday anyone with a soapbox - or anything else to
stand on - can rant or ramble on about anything at
all.
Kew Gardens
Kew Gardens, in Richmond, Surrey, is both a beautiful
park and an important botanical research centre. There's
a vast expanse of lawn and formal gardens as well as
two soaring Victorian conservatories - the Palm House
and the Temperate House - which are home to exotic
plant life. It's one of the most visited sights on
the London tourist agenda, which means that it can
get very crowded, especially in the summer. And with
nearby Heathrow continuously spitting out jets, there
isn't much chance of total peace and quiet. Spring
is probably the best time to visit, but any time of
the year is delightful.
