Places of interest


London Eye

The Coca-Cola London Eye is situated on the South Bank of the river Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament.

The London Eye is a giant Ferris wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London. It is Europe's tallest Ferris wheel and it is the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75 million visitors annually. The structure is 135 meters (443 ft) tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 meters (394 ft). Until 2006, when it was surpassed, it was the world's tallest Ferris wheel.

The London Eye offers the highest public viewing point in London .

It was designed by the husband-and-wife team of Julia Barfield and David Marks of Marks Barfield Architects .

Mace was responsible for construction management, with Hollandia as the main steelwork contractor and Tilbury Douglas as the civil contractor. Consulting Engineers Tony Gee & Partners designed the foundation works while Beckett Rankine designed the marine works.

The London Eye was formally opened by Prime Minister Tony Blair on December 31, 1999, but did not open to the public until 9 March 2000 .

Ownership and branding: Marks Barfield ( the lead architects), the Tussauds Group, and British Airways were the original owners of the London Eye. Then Tussauds bought out British Airways and Marks Barfield to become sole owner.

The Eye has done for London what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris.

It is not just for specialists or rich people, but for everybody. The beauty of it: it is public and accessible, and it has a great position in the heart of London.




Madame Tussaud,

is a wax museum in London with smaller museums in a number of other major cities. It was founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud. It used to be known as "Madame Tussaud's"; the apostrophe is no longer used. Madame Tussaud's is a major tourist attraction in London, displaying the waxworks of famous and historic people and also popular film characters

Marie Tussaud was born as Marie Grosholtz in 1761 in France. Her mother worked for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Bern, Switzerland, who was a physician skilled in wax modeling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. He moved to Paris and took his young apprentice, with him.

Tussaud created her first wax sculpture in 1777 of Voltaire. At the age of 17 she became the art tutor to King Louis XVI of France's sister, Madame Elizabeth, at the Palace of Versailles . During the French Revolution she was imprisoned for three months awaiting execution, but was released after the intervention of an influential friend. Other famous people whom she modelled included Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the Revolution, she modelled many prominent victims.

She inherited the doctor's vast collection of wax models following his death in 1794, and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. She married Francois Tussaud in 1795, and the show acquired a new name: Madame Tussaud's.

She was unable to return to France because of the Napoleonic Wars, so she traveled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection. From 1831, she took a series of short leases on the upper floor of "Baker Street Bazaar" . This became Tussaud's first permanent home in 1836.

By 1835, Marie had settled down in Baker Street, London and opened a museum. One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors.

This part of the exhibition included victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers and other criminals. Other famous people were added, including Lord Nelson and Sir Walter Scott.

Some sculptures still exist that were done by Marie Tussaud herself. The gallery originally contained 400 different figures, but fire damage in 1925 coupled with German bombs in 1941 has rendered most of these older models defunct. In 1842, she made a self-portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum. She died in her sleep on 16 April 1850

By 1883, the restricted space and rising cost of the Baker Street site prompted her grandson Joseph Randall to commission the building at its current location on Marylebone Road. The new exhibition galleries were opened on 14 July 1884 and were a great success.

Madame Tussaud's wax museum became a major tourist attraction in London, incorporating the London Planetarium in its west wing and a large animated dark ride, The Spirit of London, opened in 1993. Today's wax figures at Tussauds include historical and royal figures, film stars, sports stars, and famous murderers but, in January 2016, the famous statue of Adolf Hitler was removed from the London museum in response to an open letter sent by a staff writer of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, followed by significant support for its removal from social media.




Big Ben,

is the nickname for the Great Bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London and is usually extended to refer to both the clock and the clock tower. The official name of the tower in which Big Ben is located was originally the Clock Tower, but it was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

The tower was designed by Augustus Pugin in a neo-gothic style. When completed in 1859, its clock was the largest and most accurate four-faced striking and chiming clock in the world. The tower stands 315 feet (96 m) tall, and the climb from ground level to the belfry is 334 steps. Its base is square, measuring 39 feet (12 m) on each side. Dials of the clock are 23 feet (7.0 m) in diameter. On 31 May 2009, celebrations were held to mark the tower's 150th anniversary.

Big Ben is the largest of five bells and weighs 13.5 long tons (13.7 tonnes. It was the largest bell in the United Kingdom for 23 years. The origin of the bell's nickname is open to question; it may be named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw its installation, or heavyweight boxing champion Benjamin Caunt. The clock uses its original Victorian mechanism, but an electric motor can be used as a backup.

The clock and dials were designed by Augustus Pugin. The clock dials are set in an iron frame 23 feet (7.0 m) in diameter, supporting 312 pieces of opal glass, rather like a stained-glass window. Some of the glass pieces may be removed for inspection of the hands. The surround of the dials is gilded. At the base of each clock dial in gilt letters is the Latin inscription:

DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM

Which means O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First.

The tower is a British cultural icon recognised all over the world. It is one of the most prominent symbols of the United Kingdom and parliamentary democracy.


Trafalgar Square,

is one of London’s most vibrant spaces in the middle of the city.

Most of the area now occupied by Trafalgar Square was the courtyard of the Great Mews stabling, which served Whitehall Palace.

The architect John Nash began to develop ‘a new street from Charing Cross to Portland Place’. He wanted it to be a cultural space open to the public.

The site was officially named Trafalgar Square.

William Railton designed the column and statue to honour Admiral Nelson, after his victory in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

The granite statue was sculpted by E. H. Baily. It is five metres high and stands on a bronze platform made from old guns from the Woolwich Arsenal Foundry.

The four bronze panels at the base of the column depict some of Nelson’s battles. The lions, designed by Sir Edwin Landseer, are said to protect Nelson’s Column.

The fountains were added in 1845. The mermaids, dolphins and tritons (the male figures with tails like fish) were installed later. The fountains operate on most days.

There are four plinths for statues in the square. Bronze statues stand on three of them: General Sir Charles James Napier in the southwest, Major General Sir Henry Havelock in the southeast and King George IV in the northeast.

A small police box can be found on the southeast corner of the square. There was originally a lamp, built in 1826. In 1926, Scotland Yard installed a telephone line and light which the police could use to call for assistance. It is now used for storage.

Trafalgar Square today

In July 2003 a huge project to transform Trafalgar Square was completed. The north terrace was pedestrianised, so that the square is now linked to the National Gallery. The changes also included a cafe, public toilets and a lift for disabled access.

Trafalgar Square is a centre of national democracy and protest. Many events are hosted including cultural celebrations, commercial events, filming and photographic shoots. Rallies and demonstrations are frequently held at weekends on different political, religious and general issues. The Mayor supports this democratic tradition, and gives access to the square for such causes.



The British Museum,

located in the Bloomsbury area of London, in the United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture.

It is a museum of the world, for the world that discovers over two million years of human history and culture. Some of the world-famous objects like the Rosetta Stone, are kept there. The museum exhibits the works of man from prehistoric to modern times from around the world . It is the first national public museum in the world.



Its permanent collection numbers 8 million works, and is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire, and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.

The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum – in 1881.

Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, for example, the case of the Parthenon Marbles.

From 1778, a display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of previously unknown lands.

In the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. After the defeat of the French campaign in the Battle of the Nile, the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculptures and in 1802 King George III presented the Rosetta Stone – key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, laid the foundations of the collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture. Many Greek and Roman sculptures followed in 1805. In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to the UK. The collections were supplemented by Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities.

Under the supervision of the Italian librarian Anthony Panizzi, called " the second founder " of the British museum, the Library, with its so called " reading room" quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution , the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris.

The British Museum houses the world's largest collection of Egyptian antiquities . It includes objects of all periods from Egypt and Sudan.

In the Department of Greece and Rome, the British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age to the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the Edict of Milan under the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine I

The Greek objects originate from across the Ancient Greek world, from the mainland of Greece and the Aegean Islands, to neighbouring lands in Asia Minor and Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean and as far as the western lands of Magna Graecia that includes Sicily and southern Italy.

Beginning from the early Bronze Age, the department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities outside Italy.

The collections of ancient jewellery and bronzes, Greek vases, Roman glass including the famous Cameo glass Portland Vase, Roman mosaics from Carthage and Utica in North Africa are particularly important.



Piccadilly Circus,

is one of London's most popular tourist attractions. It was built in 1819 . It is a circular open space created in 1819 to connect Regent Street and Piccadilly.

Piccadilly Circus is one of the symbols of the British capital.

The crowded intersection is indeed one of the very symbols of the British capital and has been a popular meeting place for Londoners and tourists for centuries.

In October 2017 Piccadilly Circus, after 9 months of work has been returned to the city with a super-technological restyling for the iconic public displays. A unique, monumental 780 square meter display has been created. It is the largest in Europe.

Piccadilly Circus is a very happy location, right in the center of the West End, close to important places of interest, such as the Shaftesbury theaters, or streets like Coventry Street and The Haymarket, full of shops and trendy clubs.

On the side of the square there is the fountain, named Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, erected in 1893 in honor of philanthropist Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. At the top of the fountain we find the famous statue created by the sculptor Alfred Gilbert. The statue of Piccadilly Circus represents the Angel of Christian Charity. At the beginning, the statue did not please the public and this convinced the sculptor to abandon his artistic career .

Piccadilly Circus is one of the most famous squares in London, and certainly one of the busiest: every year 100 million people pass through this that for the Londoners is the navel of the world. It is located in the City of Westminster, a focal point, symbol and meeting place of the British capital.

The bright signs are the most important things about the attention of those who are passing through these parts, a brand new hyper-technological system able to illuminate the surrounding area with continuous images. Piccadilly Circus guarantees advertisers, something like 30 million pounds a year is required to appear on the screens.



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The Palace of Westminster

located on the banks of the river Thames. is the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Commonly known as the Houses of Parliament after its occupants, the Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London.

Its name, which is derived from the neighbouring Westminster Abbey, may refer to either of two structures: the Old Palace, a medieval building complex destroyed by fire in 1834, or its replacement, the New Palace that stands today. The palace is owned by the monarch in right of the Crown and for ceremonial purposes, retains its original status as a royal residence. The building is managed by committees appointed by both houses, which report to the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker.

The first royal palace was built on the site in the 11th century, and Westminster was the primary residence of the Kings of England until fire destroyed much of the complex in 1512. After that, it served as the home of the Parliament of England, which had been meeting there since the 13th century, and also as the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice, based in and around Westminster Hall. In 1834, an even greater fire ravaged the heavily rebuilt Houses of Parliament, and the only significant medieval structures to survive were Westminster Hall, the Cloisters of St Stephen's, the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, and the Jewel Tower.

The subsequent competition for the reconstruction of the Palace was won by the architect Charles Barry, whose design was for new buildings in the Gothic Revival style, specifically inspired by the English Perpendicular Gothic style of the 14th–16th centuries. The remains of the Old Palace were incorporated. The River Thames, is the setting of its nearly 300-metre long façade, called the River Front. Barry was assisted by Augustus Pugin, a leading authority on Gothic architecture and style, who designed the interior of the Palace. Construction started in 1840 and lasted for 30 years. An extensive repairs took place after the Second World War, including the reconstruction of the Commons Chamber following its bombing in 1941. During the Second World War the Palace of Westminster was hit by bombs on fourteen separate occasions . The Palace of Westminster features three main towers. Of these, the largest and tallest ( 98.5-metre ) is Victoria Tower, on the south-western corner of the Palace .

The slender form of the Central Tower, which was designed as a spire, markedly contrasts with the more massive square towers at the ends of the Palace.

The Palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom. The Elizabeth Tower, in particular, which is often referred to by the name of its main bell, Big Ben, is an iconic landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, and an emblem of parliamentary democracy.

There are a number of small gardens surrounding the Palace of Westminster that contains over 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases and 4.8 kilometres of passageways, which are spread over four floors. The ground floor is occupied by offices, dining rooms and bars; the first floor houses the main rooms of the Palace, including the debating chambers, the lobbies and the libraries. The top-two floors are used as committee rooms and offices.

Westminster Palace

Covent Garden

Vibrant Covent Garden in London's West End is a must-see destination for anyone who enjoys shopping, theatre, restaurants, bars, history and culture.

Originally Convent Garden was owned by the Benedictines of Westminster. The site was developed by the 4th earl of Bedford as the cities of London and Westminster grew together along the north bank of the River Thames. It was laid out in the 1630s as a “piazza,” or residential square to the design of Inigo Jones. Surrounded on three sides by tall houses with an arcaded street floor, the square was bounded on the west by the low, solemn-porticoed St. Paul’s Church.

Covent Garden Market operated informally for many years before it was established “forever” by Charles II in 1670. It was rebuilt and reorganized in 1830, and in 1974 it moved to a new, more spacious market site. The Market Building now includes a variety of shops and attractions, as the London Transport Museum.

The Covent Garden Theatre, the original theatre on the site, was opened (1732) by John Rich and served for plays, pantomimes, and opera. The structure burned in 1808 and was rebuilt . In 1847 it became the Royal Italian Opera House under the noted conductor Michael Costa. The building burned in 1856, and a new building was opened in 1858. The Royal Italian Opera failed in 1884 and was replaced by the Royal Opera Company under Augustus Harris and, later, Maurice Grau; the repertoire was largely Italian opera.

The house closed during World War I but reopened in 1919 and closed again during World War II, The house reopened in 1946.

There are several other theatres in the surrounding district, as the London Coliseum Theatre which is home to the English National Opera.

A visit to this place is very pleasant. Shops, restaurants and anything else of luxury, all very refined and shiny. It is interesting to know that years ago this district of London was one of the poorest and most infamous.

If you are here to explore the multitude of shops, theaters, bars, pubs and restaurants, or just to confuse yourself among the unstoppable crowd that

through this beautiful area of the city, your senses will immediately be captured by the historic and festive atmosphere of Covent Garden. Do not be surprised to be fascinated

from the many improvisations of street artists who cheer the crowd in the square in Covent Garden. Many of the local restaurants offer fixed menus for spectators,

and remain open beyond normal times.