London - sightseeing

London has more than 80 parks within a seven- to eight-mile radius of the city’s centre. Some of the grounds are manicured; others, like Hamstead’s heath, run a bit wild. Nevertheless, Hyde Park is without question the largest and most famous park in London, with more than 340 acres of parkland, including swimming and boating on the serene Serpentine lake, horseback riding at Rotton Row, strolling through numerous botanical gardens and simply relaxing on the rolling greens. In addition to the recreational amenities, Hyde Park features several of London’s attractions, including the magnificent Achilles statue, the War Memorial and the Wellington Arch and Museum.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens - the grounds where the royals once hunted boar are now landscaped parkland with avenues of trees and the Serpentine, an ornamental lake on the site of a long-disappeared river. On the western edge of Kensington Gardens is Kensington Palace. You’ll see cyclists and in-line skaters in much of Hyde Park (cycling isn’t permitted at other parks). At Speaker’s Corner, near Marble Arch, all forms of humanity vent their obsessions on Sunday mornings.

London is a paradise for Museum and Art lovers, with an array of options to suit any taste.

The British Museum

The British Museum, has free entry, a lovely setting in Bloomsbury, the building was once open-air and has now been enclosed by a glass roof that concaves down into the centre where the reading room, used by such people us T.S.Elliot , sits. In a classical columned and domed building of 1857, this museum accommodates one of the world’s greatest collections of antiquities, with great collections from Persia, Egypt, Native America, China and much much more. The only kind of art you won’t find here are paintings, which are mostly in the National Gallery and in the Tate Gallery. One of the most important pieces at the British is certainly the frieze of the Parthenon, by the Greek sculptor Fidia, which if you drop by you must absolutely see. The Museum’s site can be seen at www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk.

The Tate Gallery

The Tate Gallery collection is subdivided in several buildings, two of which in London. The main one is the Tate Britain, in Millbank, London SW1P 4RG, which hosts the modern art collection. The Tate Modern Gallery, in a stunning venue in Bankside, London SE1 9TG, which is worth visiting just for its design, is dedicated to contemporary art, and is London’s most important exhibition centre for contemporary artists. The Tate collection includes, just to make a few examples, works by Francis Bacon, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Lichtenstein, Magritte, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, William Blake (the poet) and Peter Blake (the one who did the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album cover), Bonnard, Braque, Cézanne, Dalí, Degas, Duchamp, Ernst, and several others. To learn more, check out www.tate.org.uk .

The National Gallery

The National Gallery, located in Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN, has a huge collection of paintings, and is the ideal complement to the Tate collection, in that it hosts works by Renaissance and Baroque artists. It was started in 1824 when the House of Commons allocated the money to buy the private collection of a banker, John Julius Angerstein, which consisted of 38 pictures. This 38 paintings were to become the core of a much bigger collection, which was later hosted in a purpose-constructed building in Trafalgar Square. The collection includes works by Jan van Eyck, Botticelli, Holbein the Younger, Leonardo da Vinci (the famous Virgin of the Rocks), Titian, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Monet and Renoir, just to name a few. The National Gallery’s site can be found at www.nationalgallery.org.uk/.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery

"The most beautiful small art gallery in the world", according to the Sunday Telegraph, includes a great collection of Baroque and later-era paintings, including Poussin, Watteau, Rubens, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Guido Reni, Guercino, Watteau, and many more. It is located in the beautiful eighteenth century village of Dulwich, on the outskirts of London. It address is Gallery Road, Dulwich Village, London SE21 7AD. Entrance free for students. Check out its beautiful website at www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

For the lovers of beautiful artisan work, for those interested in the small pleasures of being surrounded by beautiful objects, one good place to go is the Victoria and Albert Museum, in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2RL. The Museum’s slogan goes like this: "Where can you find calligraphy and graffiti, Medici and Gucci, stained glass and fibre glass? Where else but the V&A, the world’s greatest museum of applied and decorative arts. Home to amazing artefacts from the world’s richest cultures, the V&A’s unsurpassable collection has inspired and informed for over 150 years." The V&A’s collections span two thousand years of art, from all over the world. It was established in 1857, following the success of the Great Exhibition which had taken place the previous year, with the purpose of educating the people and making works of art available to all, for one’s own education, and as a source of inspiration for British artisans and designers. Its initial name was Museum of Manufacturers, and while at first it exhibited examples of metalwork, furniture, textiles and all other forms of decorative art, soon it started purchasing "higher" art as well. The Museum kept expanding, as covered areas meant for temporary exhibitions became permanent parts of the main building. Queen Victoria, in 1899, gave it a new main building and façade, and since then the Museum’s reputation kept growing, with an expanding collection of Art Nouveau objects, as well as purchases from the Far East areas of the British Empire. It is now often exhibits works by modern fashion designers, often alongside the older artefacts which inspired their works. You can check out the Museum’s site at www.vam.ac.uk/.