Our City of London walks include a lot of facts and figures about the history and the workings of the City of London.
Greater London occupies and area of around 640 square miles. It is divided into 31 boroughs and 2 Cities, The City of London and the City of Westminster.
It is home to some 7 million people who between them speak around 300 different languages, making London and incredibly culturally diverse place.
The City of Westminster is the Royal City and is also home to the machinery of British Government and home to Parliament.
The City of London occupies and area of just one square mile. But that one square mile is, without doubt, the wealthiest square mile on earth as it is the financial centre of London and home to over 200 banks, numerous insurance companies, investment houses
The one square mile covered by the City of London starts just alongside the Royal Courts of Justice in the west of the city, encircles the streets as far as Clerkenwell and Shoreditch to the north of London, and goes as far east as the Tower of London with the River Thames making a natural southern boundary.
Many Cities can point to a specific act of foundation or a particular founder be he real or mythical. Not so London. Indeed there is a great deal of debate over how long the area now covered by London has seen human occupation.
But to all intents and purposes the London that we know began a few years after the Roman invasion of AD43. Having sailed up the River Thames the Roman’s found an area where the River was shallow enough to cross and where the banks on either side were gravel, opposed to the marsh that they had encountered on much of their journey up river.
Within 10 years of their arrival in Britain the Roman’s established trading port here and called it Londinium. Thus with the coming of the Romans London was established as a trading city and even today 2,000 years later it is still a place where daily trading is done.
You can enjoy the streets, squares and buildings of that City on our Historic City of London walks such as The Secret City and The London Story.
