This Week In London’s History Monday – 1st September 1856: Richard Westmacott, the sculptor responsible for numerous London landmarks, dies at his Mayfair home. Tuesday – 2nd September 1666: The Great Fire of London breaks out. It would burn for three days, destroying over 13,000 buildings. Wednesday – 3rd September 1878: Passenger steamer Princess Alice collides with cargo ship Bywell Castle on the Thames near Woolwich Pier. All of the 700 passengers of the......

‘It’s new and it’s bloody scary,’ says the tourist blub. ‘C’est nouveau et terriblement effrayant,’ it repeats in French. Well, you try sounding menacing in that language. ‘Eine neue, unheimlich gruselige Sensation.’ That’s more like it. We prefer the German, especially as ‘die London Bridge Experience’ carries an apt definite article. London’s new tourist attraction beneath guess-which bridge opened its doors yesterday. (After two days of PR misery when power failures scuppered the media......

So, back to our Christmas theme today, with this mouthwatering picture of St Paul's standing atop Pudgate Hill. The dripping roof no doubt tastes a lot better than its counterpart of 1666. During the Great Fire, the lead roof of Old St Paul's melted, and a plumbate river oozed through the burning town. We'll be featuring a festive 'Touch Up' every day until Christmas, so please send entries to Londonist - at -gmail -......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Seven Stars 53-54 Carey St WC2A 2JB Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane, Temple 0207 242 8521 11am-11pm (Monday-Friday) 12pm-11pm (Saturday) 12pm-10:30pm (Sunday) Map Expect to Pay: £10 or slightly more for mains Rating: 9.5 out of 10 This week’s What’s for Lunch? finds us back in the pub. And, considering we’re nestled in and having a scrummy meal across from......

As soon as the sun came out, half of you probably rushed to the nearest beach. Or the nearest pub. Or the nearest airport. Now you're back in the real world and you've spent all your money. It means that we can't go and see the Summer exhibition at Buckingham Palace (we love an excuse to be nosy!) and we can't go and see Orlando Bloom in 'In Celebration' (apparently it's not very good......

Back to St Paul’s again this week. The modern image was taken by Joao Mario along Bankside last week; the other is 100 years old. The foreground is utterly recast. This area took one hell of a blitzing, while the cathedral, symbolically, remained seemingly unscathed. Look closely at the City of London School for Boys (the brown foreground building in the 2007 shot). Its contours, to the left of the sloping roof, loosely mimic......

With the popularity of monthly late night events at Tate Britain and the V&A, is it any wonder that other museums want to get in on the act? The latest addition to the fold is the Museum of London, which will be holding its first late night opening tonight. They haven't entirely got the hang of it - it'll all be over by 9pm - but the principle of the thing is sound. With......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 27. Cobb's Court Where? Northern strand in a City cavalcade of passages. This one's located in the snickety heaven south-west of St Paul's. What? Cobb's Court was a new, if modest, addition to the City after the Great Fire, built on ground formerly occupied by St Anne, Blackfriars. Passage-master Ivor Hoole suggests the name may come from Paul Cobb, Mayor of Bedford, who had documented liason's......

We're drowning in paper: Up to 12 tons of newspapers a day are being abandoned by commuters on London Underground stations and trains, new figures show. The statistics were revealed by Ken Livingstone following a question raised by the London Assembly Conservatives at Mayor's question time in January. They have asked Transport for London to install more newspaper recycling points on the network to tackle the problem. Sure recycling is one way forward, but......

As the guidebooks are fond of reminding us, it's the 'tallest freestanding stone column in the world'. But the Monument is much lower down the list of tourist attractions than, say, Nelson's Column. Frankly, it's the sort of C-list memorial that might appear on Celebrity Big Brother, if they decided to trade non-sentient human eye-candy for its equivalent in stone. And it's got a history of slagging off minority groups, too. A plaque on......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways 20. Faulkner's Alley Where? Runs parallel to Turnmill Street, between Cowcross Street and Benjamin Street. What? Wooooo! Spooky, eh? And so it should be. This little shortcut is 350 years old, predating the Great Fire. This part of Cowcross Street would have then overlooked the River Fleet, which today lies buried beneath the Metropolitan Line tracks. Back then, herds of cattle would have been herded daily......

The Blitz may have been started entirely by accident, it was claimed yesterday. A Luftwaffe pilot may have kick-started the second Great Fire of London by dumping unused bombs on the East End instead of the English Channel. During the war, it was common practice on both sides (for reasons of safety) to jettison surplus ammo in the Channel before heading for home. But Captain Rudolph Hellensleben – recommended for the German equivalent of......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 10. Took’s Court Where? Piddling little dogleg to the East of Chancery Lane. Yes, we’re back near Samuel Johnson Land again. What? Surely London’s least grimy alley. Sandblasted and scrubbed to the point that you could eat your dinner off it whilst performing open heart surgery. The largely useless route was built just before the Great Fire by a chap called Thomas Took (and not......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 9. French Ordinary Court Where? In an area of the City where unlikely street names are two-a-penny (Seething Lane, Mincing Lane, Savage Gardens), French Ordinary Court is perhaps the wackiest of all. It links Fenchurch Street to Crutched Friars (there’s another one) via some fancy brickwork vaulting. What? Two passages in one - a veritable ginnel glut. The northern, open-air end is known as St......

When it comes to London’s tall buildings, it’s not all onwards and upwards. For every new highrise that goes up, something usually has to come down. Such is the case with Drapers Gardens, on Throgmorton Avenue. Like Tower 42 and Centrepoint, it comes from the master of the almost-interesting building, Richard Seifert. In fact, Seifert reportedly described Drapers Gardens as his proudest achievement. But its days are now fleeting. As shown in our photo,......

This day in London’s History 1900: The future Labour party was founded. A jamboree of like-minded lefties gathered at the Congregational Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street (building long since demolished and currently a construction site near Ludgate Circus). To the rumble of passing LCDR trains, the delegates created the Labour Representation Committee, which evolved into the party we know and deride today. Perhaps more importantly, on this day in 1957 Adrian Smith of Iron......