London bridge stands at the western end of the Pool of London and is positioned 30 metres (98 ft) upstream from previous alignments. The approaches to the medieval bridge were marked by the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr on the northern bank and by Southwark Cathedral on the southern shore. Until Putney Bridge opened in 1729, London Bridge was the only road crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston upon Thames. London Bridge has been depicted in its several forms, in art, literature, and songs, including the nursery rhyme “London Bridge Is Falling Down”, and the epic poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Clock of Westminster located at the northern end of the Palace of Westminster in London, England, a name that is often expanded to also refer to the Clock and Clock Tower.
The tower was designed by Augustus Pukin in the Neo-Gothic style. When it was completed in 1859, its clock was the largest and most accurate four-sided clock in the world. The tower is 316 feet (96 meters) high and requires 334 steps to climb from the ground to the bell tower. Its base is square and measures 40 feet (12 meters) on each side. The dial of the clock measures 22.5 feet (6.9 meters) in diameter. All four countries of Great Britain are represented on the tower, with the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the shamrock of Ireland and the leek of Wales on the shield. On May 31, 2009, the 150th anniversary of the commemorative tower was celebrated.
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge.
Overview
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. Located on the River Thames in south-east England, at the headwaters of the 50-mile (80 km) mouth of the North Sea, it has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London is its ancient core and financial centre, founded by the Romans as Londinium, and retains its medieval boundaries. Westminster, west of the City of London, has been the seat of national government and parliament for centuries. Since the 19th century, the name “London” has also referred to the metropolis surrounding this core, historically divided into Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire, which mainly includes the London, administered by the Greater London Authority.
As one of the world’s major cosmopolitan cities, London exerts a strong presence in the arts, entertainment, fashion, business and finance, education, healthcare, media, technology, tourism, transport and communications. Its gross domestic product (801.66 billion euros in 2017) makes it the largest urban economy in Europe and one of the world’s major financial centres. The most concentrated higher education institution in Europe, it has some of the world’s highest-ranked academic institutions – Imperial College London in natural and applied sciences, London School of Economics in social sciences and comprehensive UCL. London is the most visited city in Europe and has the busiest urban airport system in the world. The London Underground is the oldest rapid transit system in the world. London has the most five-star hotels.
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