London Covent Garden

On a beautiful sunny winter day we went for a walk at Covent Garden. Covent Garden is one of the oldest markets from the late 1600s until the 1970s in London.

 It functioned as a vegetable and fruit market. Because of the Great Fire of London in 1666, all the rival commercial centres were destroyed in the city, so Covent Garden has become the most important commercial centre of the country. 

It was the "vegetable garden" of the Westminster area. The market and its surroundings became one of London's famous red-light quarter in the 18th century. Nowadays Covent Garden is a tourist attraction, there is a huge crowd day and night. 

The shops sell souvenirs for visitors and you can buy craft products at a high price on the old Apple Market. 

Covent Garden is the only one area in London where it's officially allowed to perform for street entertainers. 

 The central square is overlooking the London Transport Museum 

and the back entrance of the Royal Opera House.

This area has many cafés, pastry shops, sandwich bars and small restaurants, where you can go to eat something and rest a little.

London St Paul's Cathedral

I still had enough time after my walk in Temple Quarter, so I walked on to St Paul's Cathedral. 

The Cathedral is surrounded by houses, so it isn't possible to take a photo of the entire building. 

The inside is really beautiful and monumental and of course, I couldn't take pictures here. (for this reason some photos are illustrations). There are guards almost at every point. 

 I thought, if I paied an expensive ticket, I want to see everything, from the basement to the roof. The cathedral was built on top of Ludgate Hill.

 It is the highest point of London and the Cathedral is the fifth largest church in Europe. The predecessor of today's church - the Old Paul's 

Cathedral - was built in Gothic style in the 13th century. A lightning struck the church tower in 1561 and the tower collapsed. The church burned to the ground during the Great Fire of London in 1666. The rebuilt Cathedral was handed over after three years of construction in 1669. The Cathedral is fascinating, so it's worth knowing some data.

The cathedral is 175 metres long, the nave is 28 metres high. The 31 metre 

diameter dome, is less than 11 metres smaller than the St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. The inside corridor of the dome is 30 meters high, which could be walked round. The circular corridor is called Whispering Gallery. 

The name comes from the fact, if you whisper something on one side of the barrier, I can hear it on the other side clearly. 376 steps lead up to the Stone Gallery and another 152 steps to the Golden Gallery. I climbed them. The reward is a full panorama of London on the top.

I'm sorry, but the view isn't so beautiful for me from above. I don't like it, when you are erect skyscrapers in a historical quarter or among centuries-old buildings. And the permanent constructions. 

You can experience in the whole city while you go on foot, but it's even more striking from above. Of course, you can interpret it as a positive thing, but it's very complicated to make a photo where a crane doesn't protrude into the picture.

From the 111 metres high dome you can see the whole London. A golden sphere is on top of the dome. It is 6 metres in diameter. The 17 ton Great Paul church bell is in the south tower, it was made in 1882. The chimes have been in the north tower since 1878.

 The cathedral didn't suffer extensive damage in the II. World War, the main altar got a bomb hit only, but it was restored in its original state. The first church organ of the cathedral was built in 1695. The composer Handel played its Messias oratorium in 1759 here. The present organ was built in 1870, 

They used up some old pipes of old organ. The largest crypt of Europe is standing underneath the whole Cathedral. Here was buried for example the former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill,

the inventor of penicillin Fleming, admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington here. 

The cathedral is the residence of the Bishop of London. Queen Victoria and Queen Elisabetht II. celebrated the diamond jubilee of theirs reign, Cahterina of Aragon (the future wife of Henry VIII. ) and Prince Arthur got married before the big fire in 1501 here, and Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer got also married here in 1981 here.                                            

London Kensington

It was a beautiful and sunny day like in spring. We went for a walk to Kensington. The district is full of surprises and nice places. This area is big enough, so we spent the whole day there. There are many museums, but you need to look at them the whole day, one by one. So I have to go again next time.

Kensington can be found in west London and it's an extremely rich area. There are also very expensive streets, with exclusive pubs, shops, restaurants, hotels, etc.

 However, Kensington has the most population density in London. The houses are generally 4-5 storey terraced houses in Victorian style. Nevertheless, you can see beautiful green fields.

We found the footprint of Béla Bartok and Dénes Gábor.

Béla Bartók went to Great Britain 14 times, between 1922 and 1937.

 He also lived in Kensington. There is a memorial plaque on his former residence in Sydney Place.

Dénes Gabor was the inventor of holography. 

His residence is not far from the Natural History Museum.

First we walked from the Victoria Station to the Pont Street. 

From here we went further to the museum quarter, Imperial College, Royal Albert Hall, Kensington High Street, Albert Memorial, Kensington Park, Kensington palace, Round pond and we came back through the Hyde Park to the train station.

The Victoria és Albert Museum is the world's largest museum of applied arts. 

There are almost 5 million exhibits. The museum was founded in 1852 by Queen Victoria, and it was named after Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. The building is gigantic, you can walk about 13 kms in it.

You can see the original sketches of Raffaello that he made for the Sixtine chapel in Rome.

The giant collection of Natural History Museum includes the complete flora and fauna of our planet. 

In addition we can admire minerals, precious stones,the functioning of our planet and the human body. The visitors are shocked upon entrancely the cathedral-like hall and a 130 million year old, giant dinosaur skeleton.

The Science Museum presents the history of technology from the locomotive (steam-engine ) to the 21st century. 

The museum has 7 floors and 10 thousand exhibits.

The Imperial College has 15.000 students, there are more than 50 %. from abroad, from all over the world. The College has 20 student hostels, a private radio station, TV channel, newspaper and rowing club.

You can see the Imperial College Business School in the picture. The modern building was built in 2004, next to the Science Museum.

Several known scientists studied here, for example the Nobel Prize winners Fleming, the inventor of penicillin and Dénes Gábor who invented the holography. Moreover, the writer H.G.Wells, Brian May physicist, later guitarist of the group Queen, the former Prime Minister of India, New Zealand, and Singapore.

London's famous concert hall is The Royal Albert Hall.

The Hall can accommodate 8.000 people and it was built in 1870. Queen Victoria opened it in 1871. The finances for the building weren't enough, so 1300 seats were sold to the music-lovers. The descendants of the former owners are also sticking to their seats. The dome of the hall is 41 ms high and under it one of the world's largest organ can be seen with 10 thousand pipes, its weight is 150 tons.

Next to the concert hall there is the Royal College of Art.

After the Royal Albert Hall we reached the edge of Kensington Park. On the southern part of the Park stands the Princ Albert Memorial. 

The memorial was erected by Queen Victoria, to the memory of her husband Albert, who died in 1861 in typhoid fever.

The Memorial was designed by George Gilbert Scott. Prince Albert stands in the centre of the monument with a catalogue in his hands. Its allusion is that Prince Albert was an organizer of the international exhibition in London in 1851.

The symbols of Europe, Africa, Asia and America stand on the four corners of the monument. The symbols of commerce, agriculture, industry and engineering work

are above the statues of continents. 

London - Temple

I recently spent one month in England including Christmas and New Year's Eve. These were some very nice days because I could spend a lot of time with my family. When I wasn't with the family, I saw beautiful sights in my free time. Unfortunately I had fewer possibilities to travel because some places of interest were closed during winter time. On the whole I have had a great time and I have seen plenty of great sights. What I didn't see because of the bad weather, I'm going to look at in this summer.

I have been to London several times, but there are still some remaining parts of the city where I have never been. I always make a plan before my trips, but something is always left out.

I read some books and I saw some movies about the Knights Templars, 

so I looked at the Temple district. This area is called "district of lawyers". It'll turn out later, why.

I went from the Blackfriars train station 

to the Temple Court through the Tudor Street. The name of this area was Alsatia between the 15th and 17th century. It became the refuge for criminals. The authority had no right to take actions here, so this was the worst quarters of London. Daniel Defoe also found refuge here in 1692, when he was wanted by the police because of his writings. Alsatia kept its independence till 1697.

You can go to the eastern Gate of the Temple through the Tudor Street.

This area got its name from the Order of the Knights Templars. The Order of Templars was established in 1118 to protect the pilgrims who went to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem .

The Spanish branch of the Order settled down in the centre of the northern shore of the Thames. The church was originally built in the round form. The original model (sample) was the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem. Later it was widened with a rectangular part.

The Order of Templars was disbanded in 1312. King Edward II. confiscated their estates and gave those to the Johanniter Order. Edward III hired out the area of the Temple for lawyers.

King Edward II. was executed in 1327. The Major of London became the owner of the area in this period. Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders in 1541 and confiscated their possessions James I. gave the whole area to the lawyers in 1609. Here the four Lawyers Colleges of London were established later.

This area was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War.. The reconstruction lasted till the 1960s. The area is for the lawyers today again. Beside the lawyer's colleges there are also lawyer's offices, legal directories and law societies,

The most famous building is the Temple Church. 

This is one of the five medieval English round churches. The others are located in Cambridge, Northampon, Maplestead and Ludlow.

The church was consecrated by the patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius in 1185, during Henry II's reign. In the crypt the secret initiation ceremonies were held.

We can see the penitential cells up to this day, where the Irish Walter le Knight, former Commander of Bachelor starved to death in 1301 because he disobeyed for Grand Master.

Sir Christopher Wren renovated the church after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The organ was also built at this time. The building was restored three times in the 20th century, mostly it's designed with stones from Bath.

A column stands in front of the church. You can see a Templar symbol on top of the column : two knights sit on same horse. This statue was erected in 2000, in the place where the Great Fire of London stopped.

I also wanted to look at the Middle Temple Hall 

because it's a beautiful building as we can see on the following poster. 

Unfortunately it was unsuccessful. The building cannot be visited only when minimum a 10-person group is registered in advance.

The Temple Hall was built in the 16th century. Today it belongs to the college of lawyers, there is the canteen and meeting places of law students

There was the first performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," in 1602.

The college had many famous inhabitants: eg. Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the Canterbury Tales , Sir Francis Drake "pirate" of Elisabeth I., Gandhi and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair.