General Information

The sights of London embrace 2,000 years of history from the tread of Roman legions, intrusions of barbaric Vikings and Saxons, players in the age of Shakespeare, plagues, the great fire, the architectural heritage of the Georgian era and Victoria’s era of railways and trade.

Before the Romans arrived in England, there was a Celtic community revolving around a ford on the river Thames, but it was the Romans themselves who first built a bridge on the river and a wall around the square mile which was to become the City of London. They christened the city Londinium, and turned it into an important port and a hub of their net of roads. After the departure of the Romans, the city fell into a decline, but by the 7th century it was growing again, due to its importance as a trade centre, and flourished for two centuries.

The city managed to survive the invasions of Saxons and Vikings during the middle ages, even though the Danes burned London to the ground in 851. The importance of the river Thames, running across flat, fertile land, was recognized by the Norman invaders, who after their arrival in 1066 built the mighty Tower of London, in order to protect the bridge from assailing troops.

For a long time, London was the main commercial centre of England and its biggest city, but not the political capital. The Anglo-Saxon rulers had elected Winchester as their capital, and later Edward the Confessor had his palace built at Westminster. During the 12th century, Westminster increased in importance, and the Normans build a great palace there, of which the magnificent Westminster Hall still remains today. Westminster also became the home of the royal courts of justice and the exchequer.

One of the great influences in The Church held great influence in Medieval London was the Church, as was evident by its architecture. The only great civic building, the Guildhall, which exists now but in a rebuilt form, was surrounded by many churches. St. Paul’s, which was to be destroyed by lightning in 1561, was then one of the greatest cathedrals in Europe; but very few buildings or remains are left nowadays to testify this.

In the late Middle Ages, the two propelling forces in shaping both the architecture and the economy of the city were on one side the Monks, and especially the Dominican Order (Blackfriars), who arrived in England in 1221, and soon collected an amount of wealth that allowed them to build huge monasteries, and on the other side the guilds of trades and craftsmen, which grew continuously in power, helping the growth of the city’s industry, especially of cloth production, which by the 15th century would become the country’s biggest industry, as well as London’s.

The Tudor monarchy had a great impact on the architecture of the city, with Henry VII’s Chapel, which was an addition to Westminster Abbey, and Henry VIII, who build a lot of palaces, joining Westminster to the residence of the Archbishop of York, in what became the Palace of Whitehall (destroyed by a fire a little later). The Reformation was also one of the most important events in terms of the structure of the city: during Henry VIII’s reign, a lot of orders and friars were forced to relinquish their monasteries to the king, who turned them into secular buildings or destroyed them.

The destruction of the monasteries left two great issues for the times of Elizabeth I: first, the issue of the poor of the city, which were many in number and left unattended once the friars stopped their charity activities. This was addressed with special laws, in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign. The second issue was the lack institution for the education for the children, which gave birth to a number of public schools funded by the merchants, such as Chaterhouse, St. Paul’s, the City of London School, and Mercers’ Schools, which exist to this day. The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most splendid periods for the city, and certainly the heyday of classical English theatre, with a lot of theatres built in the Southwark area, such as the Rose and the Globe, where William Shakespeare worked in London. The city also contributed heavily to the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, sending many soldiers to defend the country, and after that year, thanks to a period of political stability, London grew both in population and in wealth, with a lot of new buildings built on the lands seized from the church.

The Stuart era began with the accession to the throne of King James of Scotland, as James I, in 1603. This led to a strong Scottish influence in the city, as King James and his successor Charles I introduced new urban plans for the capital, but following the latter’s tries to impose trade restrictions, the city became the centre of anti-royalist activities; the King’s struggle against the city’s forces, led by London noble families, led to his capture in 1649, and to his public execution. This led to the period of Cromwell’s republic, which also marked the return of the Jews to London after their banishment in 1292.

But the republic didn’t last long, and Monarchy was soon restored with Charles II. During his time, London hat to suffer two great disasters: the Great Plague in 1665, and the Great Fire in 1666. The Plague devastated the city, killing over 60,000 people, and it was not yet finished when in September 1666 a baker’s shop took fire. The fire lasted three days, destroying over 10,000 houses, four fifths of the area of the city within the walls, and a lot of churches, including St Paul’s.

After the fire, the city was rebuilt almost from scratch, mostly in brick and stone, and generally with wider streets. It took a long time to rebuild the city (St. Paul was finished only in 1712), and the noble families moved to the areas outside of the city walls to the West, such as Covent Garden, while the city centre became more and more of a commercial area. London gained in subsequent times more and more independence from the control of the King, and the last to limit its liberties was Charles II, who died in 1685. His successor had to fly three years later, and the London people elected Prince William of Orange as their new King. The King chose Hampton Court as his royal residence, and turned what was then Nottingham House in the present Kensington Palace.

The subsequent years were a period of peace and stability for London, which supported the King against several rebellions around the country. There was a significant increase in ground transportation, which led in 1750 to the building of a second bridge on the Thames in Westminster, and twenty years later to the building of a third bridge at Blackfriars. In the same period, the wall surrounding the city was demolished, and the surface of London increased considerably, also due to the arrival of a lot of people from the country, who populated the city’s suburbs.

This was again a period of growing civil rights, as freedom of the press was acknowledged, as well as wealth and organization, as shown by the institution of street lighting and house numbering. Several important buildings which still exist in London were built in those days, including the Bank of England, Somerset House, and the garden squares of Bloomsbury.

One of the centuries which contributed most to shaping the looks of contemporary London was the 19th, when after the victory against France in Trafalgar in 1805, England was spared from the perils of an invasion, and in 1826 George IV had what was then Buckingham House turned into the new Royal Palace. Throughout the century, the prosperity of the city led to a constant increase in land prices, and the population started to move to the suburbs, with upper and middle classes moving to Hampstead and the West End, while the poor moved to the East End, often living in overcrowded and squalid houses. Industry also moved to the suburbs and beyond, since it required big machinery, and consequently bigger buildings.

Since then, the city kept expanding constantly, with the only exception of the years 1348-49, when the Bubonic Plague reduced its population by one third. By 1700 it already had 500,000 inhabitants, and was one of Europe’s three biggest cities. By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, London was the biggest city in the world, and it still is Europe’s largest today.

In the same period, the construction of the public railway started, connecting London to most major cities in England, and was soon followed by tramways and the Underground. Starting with the 1851 Great Exhibition, which had been held according to the wishes of Prince Albert, the city was enriched by the building of several public buildings, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum, as well as the Royal Albert Hall.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, London was the busy capital of the world’s largest empires, with electric lighting, the first horseless carriages, and all kinds of goods from all over the world ready to be bought at one of the many markets and shopping areas of the city, but there existed still a huge number of people who were living in the direst conditions.

The period of the First World War marked the beginning of a new kind of destruction for London: air bombings, which toward the end of the war started to become regular and heavy, although their intensity was not at all comparable to what would come some thirty year later. There followed a happier period, during the twenties, when many of the social restrictions inherited from the Victorian era were put into question, with wilder lifestyles taking the place of sober restraint. The depression of the thirties, and the Second World War which followed, put an end to this atmosphere, and the city suffered heavy bombings, especially in 1941, and was destroyed in a significant part. It took more than ten years to rebuild it. Since then, London has kept growing, with pollution problems, and while it is not the capital of the world’s greatest empire any more, it still is one of the most important cities of Europe, a financial centre of huge importance, it has very few rivals in the continent in terms of night life and cultural events, and has become more and more of a melting pot of different cultures, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming from the former parts of the empire.