Service Description

You know when you walk through a city and have the distinct feeling of standing on top of something? As if the sidewalk were just the last layer of a much longer process. It happens often in London, but here it's more evident. You start from London Bridge Station, beneath Renzo Piano's Shard, which cuts the sky with 87 floors of glass. You exit the station and turn the corner, and there, a few minutes' walk away, is a medieval fortress that has stood for almost a thousand years. In the same skyline, in the same square mile. It's not a calculated contrast: it's the City of London. You walk along the Thames to the Tower of London: fortress, prison, mint, royal residence, depending on the century. Anne Boleyn, Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey passed through here and never left. The ravens in the courtyard are protected by law: if they left, the Crown would fall. Tower Bridge marks the passage to the City, and from here on, every street has a date engraved somewhere. Pudding Lane seems like an ordinary street, but it's not: it's the exact spot where, in 1666, a bakery burned down half of London. The Monument nearby is sixty-two meters high, exactly the distance from the source of the fire. Bank houses the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, where London merchants have done business with the rest of the world since 1565. Leadenhall Market has medieval origins but Victorian architecture that seems built yesterday. St. Paul's Cathedral has the second-largest dome in the world after St. Peter's, and it still stands, surrounded by skyscrapers that cannot obscure it. Fleet Street boasts 16th-century pubs and Twinings, opened in 1706 on the same spot. It ends at Temple, home of the Knights Templar in the 12th century, today the heart of British justice. Temple Church: circular, austere, with stone figures of knights on the floor for eight centuries. Dan Brown set a scene in The Da Vinci Code there. From now on, when you hear about London, you'll think of this square mile: where it all began. - - Walking only. No transportation, no entrance fees included. - -