Borough Market, the National Gallery, and a pint of Timothy Taylor's all within a square mile
London is the most visited city in Europe and one of the few places on earth where you can eat jerk chicken, ramen, and Nigerian suya on the same street — often from a Caribbean-owned shop that has been there since the 1970s. The food geography of London is borough-level: Borough Market (London Bridge, operating since 1276, relocated to its current site in 1756) is the reference market for the country's best produce, artisan cheese, and small-batch cured meats; Brixton Market (Electric Avenue and its surrounding covered halls) is the cultural heart of London's Caribbean community; Brick Lane…
London was founded by Rome in 43 AD as Londinium — a 330-acre timber fort at the best Thames crossing point, which became the commercial capital of Roman Britain within a generation. The 1666 Great Fire destroyed 87 churches and 13,200 houses; Christopher Wren's subsequent 51 church designs (including St Paul's Cathedral, 1710) established the silhouette that defined London until the Shard (2012). The Victorian expansion that created the modern city — the Tube (world's first underground railway, 1863), the embankment of the Thames, the borough system, the sewer network — was engineered largel…