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Hotels To Stay In London
London Hotels And Historical London Architecture
There is so much architecture in London, that it may be difficult to know where to begin. Many London hotels organise architectural tours which are a great way to get an overview of the city’s evolution. Run by professional architects and historians, Open House Architecture, on every Saturday, is a great way to learn about the buildings of London.
The oldest buildings in London are perhaps the Tower of London, Westminister Abbey, and the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. London is not characterised by any one construction style; it is a layered city, and therefore any one area can be exemplary of several eras at once. Even the famous London hotels have a chequered history worthy of London’s most famous buidings.
The Great Fire of 1666 burned down a lot of old London. Some of the buildings that perished included:
- Following the great fire, Christopher Wren designed 51 churches and historical sites. These include St Paul’s Cathedral and Kensington Palace.
- The financial district’s Royal Exchange and Bank of England are exemplary of 18th and 19th century stone architecture. London hotels such as The Ritz and The Savoy were built around this time too.
- The Old Bailey – first built in the 15th century, this court has been rebuilt several times.
- The Barbican Estate, built in the 1960s, is an architectural achievement of scale.
- Recent buildings of note include the exosceletal Lloyds building, and the “Gherkhin”, built by Norman Foster in 2004, and now an icon of the city.
There are also many things people don’t know about London Architecture. For example, almost since it’s inception hundreds of years ago, architects were not allowed to design buildings that blocked the view to St Paul’s Cathedral, which has led to the interesting shape of several buildings on The Square Mile. The new ‘Shard of Glass Skyscraper is under construction next to St Paul’s though and is set to become Europe’s largest building at 309m high. It just shows how much times have changed.
The low-rise nature of London makes its few skyscrapers noticeable from a considerable distance. For example, Canary Wharf can be seen from Battersea, eight miles away. But the influx of skyscrapers in recent years has meant that this could be a thing of the past.
London Hotels: Hempel Hotel – England Hotels and Accommodation – Hotels.tv