Nitty gritty first, mood music second… Iconic City buildings – the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, Lloyds. London a world centre for business, finance, insurance, shipping – now, and across the centuries. Where to insure your voice, your hands, your next Space Mission. The secrets of the nation’s gold – and perhaps yours too? Churches where Londoners have worshipped for centuries. A1 walk. (Yes, we’ll explain what that means. Lots of takeaway nuggets on this walk, one of which is getting you au fait with City of London lingo.)
Meet your guide. Click here for Ann’s podcast. (Think of the walk as the Command Module; Ann’s podcast is the Lunar Module.)
Ok, mood music time: London. 2,000 years old. Higgledy-piggledy. History haunted. Secretive in the extreme. A labyrinth where the past lurks in the present. Aggressively modern when you look up. A tear in space-time when you peer round this corner or go down that alley. A city that preserves features – like so many geological strata – of its earlier selves. A city that’s not easy to figure out – you don’t reap London in one traverse. Why bother? you ask. Here’s why: 1) London’s of world-historical importance and 2) depths, intricacies and secrets are always interesting. Bottom line: this is a great walk. It’s the London labyrinth and London highlights and the shaping past. You’ll see both the hoary old City and today’s London. Best of all, you’ll see into them. N.B. the walk ends in Guildhall Yard, a very short walk from St. Paul’s Tube Stop.
LONDON WALKS PRACTICALS
The Heart of the City walk takes place every Saturday at 2 pm. The meeting point is just outside the exit of Tower Hill Tube (meet by the “Tower Hill Tram” coffee stall).
“WHAT WILL I SEE?” “WHAT WILL BE PARADED BEFORE US?”
Here’s a baker’s dozen, a sampling. Important thing to remember is it’s just a sneak peek. There’s lots more than this.
1. a dense network of small streets and alleys weaving between the main thoroughfares
2. Victorian palazzi, a streetscape “as peaceful as an Italian town at siesta time”
3. an unfurling panorama that demonstrates perfectly why, in the words of one historian of city planning, “the compactness of a 2000-year-old urban core is fortuitously well suited to the operation of a globalised financial service centre.”
4. one of the few City churches to survive the Great Fire
5. a hilltop in whose “stony soil lie some of the oldest bits of London”
6. the oldest arch in the City of London
7. the building that changed public perception of tall buildings in London
8. the first of the City’s railway termini (and its “air-rights” development)
9. London’s boldest piece of architectural art (properly integrated into the project rather than a pointless add-on)
10. “a welcome restatement of the City tradition of lanes and alleys
11. a cesspit “impregnated with putrid animal and excrementitious matter”
12. there’s seeing these buildings and “seeing” them. You “see” them when you understand the relationship they achieve with their neighbours. That’s another takeaway this walk serves up
13. this place: “even today one can sense the impact this structure must have had when new, towering over the mean timber houses of the city”
And that’s just for starters, a taster…
It’s the Sky Garden. Perfect “fit” with this walk. Après walk. Free to go up. But you have to book.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING
Don’t just take it from us. Take a deep draught of the reviews. The posters are just the tip of the iceberg. Rave review after rave review.
Rebecca Solheim –
We undertook the Heart of the City tour with Ann on the hottest afternoon of the year in September 2023. Ann was a charming, humorous and knowledgeable guide, who led us through 2,000 years of City of London history from the Romans’ arrival in AD 43 to today’s skyscrapers, via London’s maritime history, plague, the Great Fire, Guilds, Pepys, Wren, the Blitz, Lloyds (Registry and insurance), and Richard Rogers’ several landmarks, with a touch of Shakespeare, and much more, thrown in. She showed us back alleys, modern plazas, ancient churches and recent skyscrapers, and left us with a taste of galleries and rooftop gardens to visit later. I highly recommend this tour of London’s Square Mile in a nutshell as a worthwhile way to spend any Saturday afternoon… Thank you, Ann.
Rachel Thompson –
We did The Heart of the City walk with Richard (the Third) and thoroughly enjoyed it. The time flew, we learned so many interesting and entertaining facts, and we visited places we’d never have discovered ourselves.
Julie Rollo –
We were on the Heart of the City tour run by Richard Roques (aka the III). It was entertaining and fascinating. Richard left you wanting to delve more into London’s past and painted a vivid picture of the City and its people as well as the modern architecture that has erupted in the area. He is passionate and hugely knowledgeable. Highly recommended and would definitely go on more tours from this company.
Zanne Forrester –
This is was my 3rd ‘London Walk’ and what fund of interesting information made all the more enjoyable by Anne’s good mix of both personal and historical quips. On a Saturday the Square Mile was quieter that it would obviously be on a weekday but the upside to this is that its much easier to focus and hone in uninterrupted on some of the wonderful photo opportunities . This last walk has whet my appetite to commit to doing many more over the next few months.
Katherine De Vere –
We had the all-knowledgeable Judy for our tour – and what she doesn’t know about London or the history of our tour isn’t worth knowing. Delightful nuggets of information, tales, whimsical titbits and facts all blend together in an exceedingly pleasant amble around the heart of the City of London. Thoroughly enjoyed learning about the buildings and the people behind them. Will never look at St Ursula in the same light – AND learnt what A1 meant. What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. THANK YOU!
Bob Passmore –
Anne was a friendly and very knowledgeable guide for our tour! When she learned that I was an insurance guy, she added lots of tid bits about insurance and even invited me to share some things about my visit to the “old” Lloyds rooms as a young man many years ago. Loved it.
Michael Herbert –
I thoroughly enjoyed Ann’s Heart of the City London Walk. She is friendly, very professional and knowledgeable about the City of London. Its really interesting part of London and the place where the Roman’s.first settled. Well done and thanks for such a fascinating afternoon.
Michael Herbert –
I thoroughly enjoyed Ann’s Heart of the City London Walk. She is friendly, very professional and knowledgeable about the City of London. Its really interesting part of London and the place where the Roman’s.first settled. Well done and thanks for such an interesting afternoon.
Sue M –
From the 17thC coffee houses to the Cheesgrater we learned so much about how and why this tiny area has played such an outsized role in not just the UK’s but the world’s economy, and how its denizens have worked, played, eaten and worshipped over the centuries (126 churches in the square mile?!). A fascinating dip into history and architecture via Ann’s entertaining and content rich presentation.
Jim Weatherbee –
Both walks we took, first the Jack the Ripper with guide Andrew was exceptional in its story telling and in the history of London. As first time visitors to London, this was a must walk. The second under guide Ann was both informative and interesting.