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History and London go hand in hand – millions of visitors from around the world come to the UK’s capital to get a slice of the tradition and heritage for which the city is renowned. Despite the periodical destruction of large chunks of London across the ages, through fire and attack, much of that history is in evidence today – from palaces and parliament to cathedrals and cobbled streets, there’s plenty of it left to see.London’s story stretches back 2,000 years to Roman times, when invaders expanding their empire westwards settled on the banks of the Thames. Over the next 300 years, despite being razed by rebel Queen Boudicca in AD61, the settlement grew to become Londinium, capital of Britainnia and home to an estimated 60,000 inhabitants. As with the rest of the Roman Empire, Londinium’s prominence began to fade until it was eventually abandoned in the 5th century, but fragments of the town’s wall are still visible amid the modern day offices in London’s financial district, and the names of Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Ludgate and Newgate can all be traced to these times.



The Missing Millennium

The legacy of life over the following 1,000 or so years in London is pretty scarce. After the Romans, London, like the rest of Britain, was the subject of settlement, invasion and resettlement. Saxons, Vikings and Normans all came to the island’s shores and the site of the capital was occupied intermittently to varying degrees, both within the old Roman city boundaries and without them to the west. But the propensity to build things very close together and out of wood meant fires often destroyed large swathes of the town. One of the more notable remnants from this period is Westminster Abbey. Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, had a huge stone church built in the 11th century on the site of a wooden monastery two miles west of the city. He didn’t last long enough to enjoy the fruits of his workers’ labours however, as he died a few days after the church was consecrated. A little less than a year later, in 1066, Norman conqueror William was coronated there, beginning a new chapter of English history and starting the royal lineage that, to some degree, continues today. The abbey that stands there now is not the original – Henry III had it rebuilt in the Gothic style a couple of hundred years later – but parts of it can be seen in the arches and columns of the cloisters. William was also responsible for ordering the construction of part of the Tower of London, another of the capital’s oldest remaining monuments.Other significant buildings from this era are few and far between. An overcrowded, dirt...