Reading Exam

Let me remind you about the reading exam. It will only contain section 1, which starts with: "Section 1 - Brief History of London. Roman London " (January, 13th), and finishes with: "East End boys and West End girls?" (February, 19th)

Regent's Park and Marylebone

South of Regent's Park, you can find the Medieval village of Marylebone, with the highest number of Georgian houses in London.

Sites to visit:

• Mme Tussaud and Planetarium
• Regent's Park
• Saint Marylebone Parish Church
• Harley Street
• Portland Place
• Broadcasting House
• All Souls church
• Langham Hotel
• Wigmore Hall
• Wallace Collection
• Sherlock Holmes Museum (The building has been altered and furnished exactly like 221b, Baker Street. You are shown the different rooms and you can buy Sherlock's books and hunter's hats on the ground floor)
  
• London Central Mosque
• Regent's Canal
• London Zoo
• Cumberland Terrace
  

Kensington and Holland Park

Around Holland Park, you can see unbelievable Victorian Houses in a luxurious residential area. Two of them are open to the public. Bayswater and Noting Hill are more cosmopolitan and lively. Portobello Road has beome a popular market, where you can find anything from food to antiques.

Sites to see:

• Holland Park (with more trees than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. It contains some original gardens from the beginning of the 19th century, a Japanese garden and fauna)
  
• Leighton House
• Linley Sambourne House
• Kensington Roof Gardens (6000 square metres of a 1930 garden on a roof; the gardens include a wood, a Spanish garden with palm trees, an English garden with pond, ducks and a couple of flamingoes. Free entry)
• Kensington Square
• Kensington Palace Gardens
• The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground
• Queensway
• Portobello Road (a lively market since 1837)
• Notting Hill
  

South Kensington and Knightsbridge

Area of consulates and embassies.

Sites to see:

• Natural History Museum
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Brompton Oratory
• Royal College of Music
• Royal Albert Hall
• Royal College of Art
• Albert Memorial
• Serpentine Gallery
• Kensington Palace
• Kensington Gardens
• Hyde Park
• Speaker's Corner (in 1872 the law allowed public speeches on any subject. Since then, on this corner of Hyde Park there's a meeting point of orators and eccentric speakers)
• Marble Arch
• Harrods
  

Chelsea

It became a fashionable area in Tudor times. It was the place for artists, like Turner, Whistler and Rossetti, and intelectuals. From the 1960's to the 80's young extravagant bohemian people used to live around the area. Nowadays it is too expensive for them.

Sotes to see:

• King's Road (here started the fashions of the mini-skirt and the punk)
• Carlyle's House. (historian and founder of the London Library; he had gatherings in this house with famous people like Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin)
• Chelsea Old Church
• Roper's Garden
• Cheyne Walk (the plaques on the houses' walls of this street show the names of their old inhabitants: J M W Turner at 119, George Eliot at 4, Henry James, T S Eliot and Ian Fleming...)
• Chelsey Physic Garden
• National Army Museum
• Royal Hospital
• Saatchi Gallery
• Sloane Square
  

South Bank

The architecture of many of its buildings, especially the Hayward Gallery, has been widely criticised. Today it is admired by people interested in culture. Also, one can find one of the new symbols of the new millenium London, the London Eye; from its top there are great views of the town.

Sites to see:

• Royal National Theatre
• Hayward Gallery
• Royal Festival Hall
• County Hall
• British Airways London Eye
• Florence Nightingale Museum (the first "proper" nurse)
• Museum of Garden History
• Lambeth Palace
• Imperial War Museum
• The Old Vic (Vic from Victoria, not Vic from the Catalan town!)
• Gabriel's Wharf
• Waterloo Station

Southwark and Bankside

Southwark was the "escape" from The City, where people could find entertainment and forbidden pleasures. Borough High Street was full of taverns, some of their Medieval yards have been preserved. At the end of the 16th century, the area was full of theatres and premises for bear and cock fights. One can still see a reproduction of The Globe Theatre in its original setting. Also, we can see the Design Museum, historical pubs, Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral.

Sites to visit:

• Southwark Cathedral
• Hop Exchange (used to be a brewery)
• Borough Market
• George Inn
• The Old Operating Theatre
• The Globe Theatre
• Cardinal's Wharf
• Bankside Gallery
• Tate Modern
• The Anchor (pub from the 16th century, although there are older remains)
• Vinopolis
• Clink Prison Museum
• Bermondsey
• London Dungeon (museum to cause horror inspired by Madame Tussaud's horror room; it shows the most frightening part of British history, with actors and special effects. There are rooms dedicated to the Black Death, torture methods and Jack the Ripper)
• Design Museum
• HMS Belfast

Smithsfield and Spitalfields

North of the The City walls, the areas always offered protection to people who did not wnat to belong to The City or that were not welcome, like the Hugonots in the 17th century o immigrants from Europe or Bengala.

Sites to visit:

• Smithfield market
• Saint Botolph church
• Museum of London
• Charterhouse
• Cloth Fair street (where there was the most important clothes market in Tudor times)
• Saint Bartholomew the Great church
• Barbican (it holds 2 theatres, a concert hall, 2 cinemas, an important art gallery, a library with important sections on children and on music, a greenhouse, and the Guildhall school of Music and Drama)
• Saint Giles church
• Whitebread's Brewery (old beer factory, of course)
• Bunhill Fields (it became a cemetery after the Black Death; important writers are buried there: Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan and William Blake)
• Wesley's Chapel-Leysian Mission
• Broadgate Centre
• Whitechapel Art Gallery
• Old Spitalfields Market
• Christ Church
• Fournier Street
• London Jamme Masjid
• Spitalfields Centre Museum of Immigration and Diversity
• Brick Lane (Bengal London)
• Dennis Severs House
• Columbia Road Market
  

The City

The financial district of London. It is built on top of the Roman settlement of Londinium. The complete name is City of London, but it is best-known as The City. Most of the area disappeared in both the Great Fire in 1666 and World War II.

Sites to see and visit in Cockneyland:

• Mansion House (official residence of the Town Hall Mayor)
• Saint Stephen Walbrook church
• Royal Exchange
• Bank of England Museum
• Saint Mary-le-Bow church
• Saint Paul's Cathedral
• Old Bailey (long relationship with crime; opposite, the pub "Magpie and Stump" used to serve the execution breakfasts until 1868 until the hanging outside the prison was forbidden)
• Apothecaries' Hall (most members are doctors and surgeons; some strange old students: Oliver Cromwell and John Keats)
• Fishmonger's Hall
• Saint Magnus the Martyr church (shouldn't it be Olga instead of Magnus?)
• Monument
• Old Billingsgate
• Saint Mary-at-Hill church
• Saint Margarit -oops, Saint Margaret Pattens church
• Tower Bridge
• All Hallows by the Tower
• Tower of London
• Saint Katharines's Dock
  
• Stock Exchange
• Saint Helen's Bishopgate church
• Saint Katharine Cree church
• Leadenhall Market (started as the Roman Forum and has had a market since the Middle Ages)
• Lloyd's of London (modern building that remind us of the Pompidou in Paris)
• Guildhall Art Gallery