London looks older than it is. The Great Fire, the Blitz and centuries of rebuilding mean most famous London buildings are newer than their style suggests — and the reasons are the interesting part.
Big Ben is a bell
The tower is the Elizabeth Tower, renamed in 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee. Before that it was simply the Clock Tower.
Big Ben is the great bell inside, and the name has attached itself to the whole structure through use.
The Palace of Westminster around it is Victorian — the medieval palace burned in 1834, leaving only Westminster Hall, which survives from 1097 and has one of the finest timber roofs in Europe.
UK residents can arrange tours through their MP; overseas visitors can book paid tours when Parliament is not sitting.
The Tower of London is nine centuries deep
The White Tower at its centre was begun by William the Conqueror shortly after 1066 — roughly 950 years of continuous occupation.
Everything around it was added over the following centuries: walls, towers, a mint, a menagerie, a prison, an armoury.
The Yeoman Warder tours are included in the ticket and are genuinely good — they are led by former senior servicemen who live on site.
Go at opening; the Crown Jewels queue builds sharply.
St Paul's exists because of the fire
The medieval cathedral burned in the Great Fire of 1666. Christopher Wren's replacement was built between 1675 and 1710.
Wren rebuilt more than fifty London churches after the fire, and many of the smaller ones still stand in the City — free, empty, and worth stepping into.
The dome survived the Blitz, and the photograph of it standing amid smoke became the defining image of London's war.
The dome climb — Whispering Gallery, Stone Gallery, Golden Gallery — is the reason to buy the ticket.
Tower Bridge is Victorian in costume
It opened in 1894, and its Gothic styling was chosen deliberately to harmonise with the Tower of London beside it.
The stone facing conceals a steel frame. The bascules still raise for river traffic on a schedule published in advance, which is worth checking — watching it lift takes five minutes and costs nothing.
The high-level walkways have glass floors and are ticketed.
People routinely confuse it with London Bridge, which is a plain concrete crossing upstream. The one sold to Arizona in 1968 was the previous London Bridge.
Westminster Abbey has been the coronation church since 1066
The current building is largely thirteenth century, replacing an earlier one, with the western towers added in the eighteenth.
Monarchs, Newton, Darwin and Hawking are buried there, and Poets' Corner holds Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy and memorials to many more.
Ticketed, with an audio guide included. Attending a service is free and is a service, not a visit.
The ones that are genuinely modern
The Shard, 2012, the tallest in western Europe.
The Gherkin, 2003, and the cluster of towers around it in the City.
Tate Modern, a power station converted in 2000, with a free viewing level.
The Millennium Bridge, which famously swayed on opening and was closed for two years to fix it.
Free landmark viewing
The Sky Garden, booked and free. One New Change's roof faces St Paul's directly. Greenwich Park and Primrose Hill for the skyline.
Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace, on a published schedule.