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The city is an international transport hub and a popular tourist destination, counting iconic landmarks such as the Big Ben, Harrods, Houses of Parliament, Leicester Square, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace amongst its many attractions, along with famous institutions such as the British Museum and ... more »
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Arsenal FC Big Ben British Museum Buckingham Palace Charlton Athletic FC Chelsea FC Chinatown Covent Garden Market Crystal Palace FC Fulham FC Hamleys Harrods Houses of Parliament Hyde Park Kensington Palace Leicester Square London Dungeon London Eye London Zoo National Gallery Oxford Street Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew St Paul's Cathedral Tate Britain Tottenham Hotspur FC Tower Bridge Tower of London Trafalgar Square Victoria and Albert Museum Westminster Abbey
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Airports The city is an international transport hub and a popular tourist destination, counting iconic landmarks such as the Big Ben, Harrods, Houses of Parliament, Leicester Square, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace amongst its many attractions, along with famous institutions such as the British Museum and the National Gallery. We also recommend you consider visiting the other tourist attractions listed such as Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, West End/Soho/Theatre District, and for some of the best shopping in the World, Oxford Street.
For Unlimited Sightseeing Budget in London - Choose the London Pass (external source)London is the capital city of England and of the United Kingdom, the most populous city in the European Union and the largest metropolitan area in Europe. It is ranked approximately as the 20th most populous metropolitan area in the world.
An important settlement for nearly two millennia, London is an international leader in finance, politics, education, entertainment, fashion, media and the arts making it a major global city.
London has an estimated population of 7.5 million (as of 2005) and a metropolitan area population of between 12 and 14 million. Its population is very cosmopolitan, drawing from a diverse range of peoples, cultures and religions, speaking over 300 different languages. Residents of London are referred to as Londoners.
Greater London covers an area of 609 square miles (1,579 km²). Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the southwest to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills such as Parliament Hill and Primrose Hill. These hills presented no significant obstacle to the growth of London from its origins as a port on the north side of the river, and therefore London is roughly circular.
The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands. It has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. The Thames Barrier was constructed across the Thames at Woolwich in the 1970s to deal with this threat, but a more substantial barrier further downstream may be necessary in the near future.
London has a number of open spaces scattered throughout the city. The largest of these in the central area are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London, and Regent's Park on the northern edge. More central places are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts. A number of large parks outside the city centre are also notable, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south east, and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south west. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the 791-acre Hampstead Heath of north London.
London's biggest industry is finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. The City is the largest financial centre in London, home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the largest law firm in the world, Clifford Chance. London handled 31% of global currency transactions in 2005 — an average daily turnover of US$753 billion — with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more Euros traded there than every other city in Europe combined.
Things to do
London's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a mainstream shopping street nearly 2km long. The adjoining Bond Street in Mayfair is a more upmarket location along with the Knightsbridge area - home to the Harrods department store - to the southwest. The districts of Knightsbridge (Sloane Street), Mayfair (Bond Street, Brook Street), and Chelsea (King's Road) represent London's prestigious role in the world of fashion, being an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo. Furthermore, London has a number of markets, including Camden Market for fashions, Portobello Road for antiques and Borough Market for foods.
London offers a huge variety of cuisines as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Well-known gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food of Chinatown. Soho offers a variety of relatively cheap international restaurants, whilst more upmarket restaurants are scattered around central London, with concentrations in Mayfair. Across the city, areas home to particular ethnic groups are often recognisable by restaurants, food shops and market stalls offering their local fare, and even the large supermarkets stock such items in areas with sizeable ethnic groups.
The Caribbean-descended community in Notting Hill in West London organises the colourful Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's biggest street carnival, every summer. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, whilst traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a very formal military pageant to celebrate the (official) Queen's Birthday.
Although there is some evidence of scattered pre-Roman settlement in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43, following the Roman invasion of Britain. This settlement was called Londinium, commonly believed to be the origin of the present-day name, although a Celtic origin is also possible.
London Burning
The first London lasted for just seventeen years. Around AD 61, the Iceni tribe of Celts led by Queen Boudica stormed London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily-planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in AD 100. However, by the 3rd century AD, the city started a slow decline due to trouble in the Roman Empire, and by the 5th century AD, it was abandoned.
Hello Vikings
By 600 AD, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement (Lundenwic) about 1km upstream from the old Roman city, around what is now Covent Garden. There was probably a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until disaster struck in 851 AD, when the new city's ramshackle defences were overcome by a massive Viking raid and it was razed to the ground. A Viking occupation twenty years later was short-lived, and Alfred the Great, the new King of England, established peace and moved the settlement within the defensive walls of the old Roman city (then called Lundenburgh). The original city became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych.
Hello Vikings .... Again
Subsequently, under the control of various English kings, London once again prospered as an international trading centre and political arena. However, Viking raids began again in the late 10th century, and reached a head in 1013 when they besieged the city under Danish King Canute and forced English King Aethelred the Unready to flee. In a retaliatory attack, Aethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established.
Anglo Saxons
Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Anglo-Saxon control under his pious step-son Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Win a War, become King
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly-finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, whilst building a castle in the southeast corner of the city to keep them under control. This castle was expanded by later kings and is now known as the Tower of London, serving first as a royal residence and later as a prison.
London beats Winchester
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall proved the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), whilst its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. Eventually, the adjacent cities grew together and formed the basis of modern central London, superseding Winchester as capital of England in the 12th century.
The Spanish Armada Sinks
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605 — the famous Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Plague and a Really Big Fire
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665-1666. This was the last major outbreak in Europe, possibly thanks to the disaster that immediately followed in 1666. A fire (the Great Fire of London) broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city (and killing off much of the disease-carrying rat population). Rebuilding took over ten years.
Railways
London's growth accelerated in the 18th century, and was the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. This growth was aided from 1836 by London's first railways which put small countryside towns within easy reach of the city. The rail network expanded very rapidly, and caused these places to grow whilst London itself expanded into surrounding fields, merging with neighbouring settlements such as Kensington. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system — the London Underground — in 1863, driving yet further expansion and urbanisation.
Ineefective Government?
London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
Bombs, Immigration and Architecture
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and flattened large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. The rebuilding during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was characterised by a wide range of architectural styles and has resulted in a lack of architectural unity that has become part of London's character. In the same period, extensive immigration, primarily from the Commonwealth, changed the demographic mix of the city. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded region was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council.
Trading Center and Terrorists
An economic revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as an eminent trading centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. IRA bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats — some of which were carried out — until their 1997 ceasefire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network — just 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground, the oldest metro system in the world, upon which nearly 1 billion journeys are made each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, whilst those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail network. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre. The London bus network caters for most local journeys and carries even more passengers than the Underground.
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Although the vast majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. An inner ring road (the North and South Circular) and an orbital motorway (the M25) are intersected by a number of busy radial routes — but very few motorways penetrate inner London. In 2003, the congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of central London.
Airports and Trains
London is an international transport hub, with five sizeable airports and a cross-channel rail service. Heathrow is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic; such traffic is also handled at Gatwick, whilst Stansted and Luton cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers. Eurostar trains link London Waterloo station with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium.
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* London has a temperate climate with regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The warmest month is July, with an average temperature range at Greenwich of 13.6 °C-22.8 °C (56.5–73.0 °F). The coolest month is January, averaging 2.4 °C-7.9 °C (35.6–46.2 °F). Average annual precipitation is 583.6 mm(22.98 inches), with February on average the driest month. Snow is uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London 5 °C hotter than the surrounding areas in winter.
Temperature - Yearly Average
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Distances are calculated as the crow flies, and are provided as an aid in planning only.
* This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Source wikipedia.
