London Quiz
Think you know the city beyond the postcards?
No Big Ben, no red phone boxes, no Buckingham Palace. These six questions go behind London's famous sights to its bells, maps, taxis and the fire that reshaped the city.
Did you know?
- The Thames Barrier, which began operating in 1982, protects central London from tidal surges coming up the river from the North Sea. Its steel gates lie flat on the riverbed and rotate upward when needed, closing a gap of about 520 metres across the Thames.
- London's famous blue plaques mark buildings where notable people lived or worked. The scheme began in 1866 and is often described as the oldest of its kind in the world. It is now run by English Heritage, and a person must usually have died at least twenty years before being honoured.
- Sections of the Roman city wall built around AD 200 can still be seen in London today, including a tall stretch near Tower Hill station. The wall shaped the City for over a thousand years, and names like Aldgate, Bishopsgate and Moorgate recall its old gates.
London beyond the famous sights
London began as Londinium, a Roman town founded around AD 47 to 50 at a point where the Thames could be bridged. The small walled city grew into the capital of England and later the centre of a global trading network. Today Greater London is home to around nine million people and 32 boroughs, but the original Roman core, the City of London, still keeps its own mayor, police force and traditions.
Rebuilding after 1666
The Great Fire of London burned for about four days in September 1666 and destroyed most of the medieval City, including old St Paul's Cathedral and more than 13,000 houses. Plans for grand new avenues were dropped because landowners wanted their plots back quickly, so much of the old street pattern survives. New rules required brick and stone instead of timber, and Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul's and more than fifty parish churches, giving the City the skyline of spires it kept for centuries.
How London moves
The Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863 as the world's first underground railway, running steam trains between Paddington and Farringdon. In 1890 the City and South London Railway became the first deep-level line with electric trains, and it now forms part of the Northern line. Above ground, London's black cabs are built to turn in a very tight circle, a rule once linked to a narrow street by the Savoy Hotel, and London's buses carry more passenger journeys each year than the Underground.
A city of villages
London grew by swallowing towns and villages such as Chelsea, Hampstead, Greenwich and Islington, and many still keep their own high streets, greens and character. This explains why the city has no single centre. Parks cover a large share of its area, from royal parks like Hyde Park and Richmond Park to wild heaths such as Hampstead Heath, and Greenwich gave the world its reference line for longitude after an international conference chose it in 1884.