London

With a population of just under eight million, and stretching more than thirty miles at its broadest point, London is by far the largest city in Europe.

It is also far more diffuse than the great cities of the Continent, such as Rome or Paris. The majority of the London s sights are situated to the north of the River Thames, which loops through the centre of the city from west to east, but there is no single predominant focus of interest, for London has grown not through centralized planning but by a process of agglomeration - villages and urban developments that once surrounded the core are now lost within the amorphous mass of Great London. Thus London s highlights are widely spread, and visitors should make mastering the public transport system, particularly the Underground (tube), a top priority.

One of the few areas of London witch is manageable on foot is Westminster and Whitehall, the city s royal, political and ecclesiastical power base for several hundred years. It s here you ll find the National Gallery and the adjacent National Portrait Gallery, and a host of other London landmarks: Buckingham Palace, Nelson s Column, Downing Street, the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. From Westminster it s a manageable walk upriver to the Tate Gallery, repository of the nation s largest collection of modern art as well as the main assemblage of British art.

The grand streets and squares of Piccadilly, St James s, Mayfair and Marylebone, to the north of Westminster, have been the playground of the rich since the Restoration, and now contain the city s busiest shopping zones: Piccadilly itself, Bond Street, Regent Street and, most frenetic of the lot, Oxford Street.

East of Piccadilly Circus, Soho and Covent Garden form the heart of the West End entertainment district, where you ll find the largest concentration of theatres, cinemas, clubs, flashy shops, cafes and restaurants. Adjoining Covent Garden to the north, the university quarter of Bloomsbury is the traditional home of the publishing industry and location of the British Museum, a stupendous treasure house that attracts more than five million tourists a year. Welding the West End to the financial district, The Strand, Holborn and Clerkenwell are little-visited areas, but offer some of central London s most surprising treats, among them the eccentric Sir John Soane s Museum and the secluded quadrangles of the Inns of Court.

A couple of miles downstream from Westminster, The City the City of London, to give it its full title is at one and the same time the most ancient and the most modern part of London. Settled since Roman times, it became the commercial and residential heart of medieval London, with its own Lord Mayor and its own peculiar form of local government, both of which survive, with considerable pageantry, to this day. The Great Fire of 1666 obliterated most of the City, and the resident population has dwindled to insignificance, yet this remains one of the great ...

- "London, The Rough Guide" - Rob Humphreys

- "Georgian London" - Summerson J.

- "The Greater Anglo-Saxon Churches" - Fisher E. A.

- "The Architecture of Britain" - Doreen Yarwood

Software :

- "AA Interactive Britain & Ireland"

- "Microsoft Encarta Interactive World Atlas 2000"