City of London
The City of London is where, around 2,000 years ago, the Romans founded the settlement they called Londinium. Surrounded by a wall for centuries, this was the historic city which grew into modern London, and the place marked by fire and plague.
Known as the Square Mile, the City of London has by far the lowest population of all 33 London boroughs, at around 8,000 people. But as a financial centre, home to banks, insurers and law firms, in the daytime that number swells to over 500,000.
An estimated 10 million visitors come each year to see sites like the St Paul’s Cathedral, the Bank of England, the Barbican Centre and, from 2026, London Museum.
There’s history around every corner here. Fleet Street is no longer the home of London’s newspapers. But reporters still gather around the Old Bailey, the City’s historic criminal court.
The Barbican estate is an icon of Brutalist architecture in the City of London.
Blogs-And-Stories
Temple Bar: London’s last surviving gateway
Royal ceremonies, human heads – and a brief spell in Hertfordshire
Photographing hidden worlds on the banks of the Thames
Portraits of the barren underbelly of London’s bridges, wharfs and piers
Baynard’s Castle: A lost riverside landmark
London’s Norman fortress that morphed into a Tudor palace
Photos of bomb-shattered London in the Blitz
The dramatic images captured by two police officers show the effects of Nazi air raids on the City
Inside the Cutler Street Warehouses
Once a centre of London’s trade and imperial ambitions
Portraits of City of London workers, 1974
John Eastcott looked beyond the bankers to document the many trades of the Square Mile
How the Norman conquest changed London
The rule of William the Conqueror and his descendants brought more than castles
The medieval graveyard on Newgate Street
How 1970s archaeologists recorded the remains of 234 people buried nearly 1,000 years ago
A thousand years of Billingsgate Market
The prize catch of London’s fish trade, home to a unique culture and generations of working history
Picture Post believed in the power of photography
This London-based magazine pioneered photojournalism in the mid-20th century
Holborn Viaduct: The City’s bright red bridge
This ornate Victorian viaduct connects Holborn with the City of London
Roman Road Market: Shopping for east London history
Where else could you find pie and mash, biriani, Suffragette history and a grime music landmark?
Jellied eels might be the ultimate London delicacy
Caught in the Thames or shipped from abroad, eels have a long history of sustaining Londoners
A timeline of Roman London: Londinium from start to end
How the Romans created London, built temples and baths, then abandoned their city 350 years later
The lost, lawless tradition of Shrovetide football
Forget pancakes – for hundreds of years, Shrove Tuesday was marked by a chaotic ball game
The Great Pestilence in London
Plague killed over half of the city’s population between 1348 and 1352
Peggy Jones: Mudlarking for survival
This mudlark earned her living, and some infamy, scavenging coal along the filthy River Thames
