Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cleopatra's Needle
London's oldest monument,
Cleopatra's Needle
, languishes little noticed on the
Thames side of the busy Victoria Embankment, guarded by two Victorian sphinxes
(facing the wrong way). In fact, the 60ft-high, 180-ton stick of granite has nothing to
do with Cleopatra - it's one of a pair erected in Heliopolis (near Cairo) in 1475 BC
(the other one is in New York's Central Park) and taken to Alexandria by Emperor
Augustus fifteen years after Cleopatra's suicide. This obelisk was presented to Britain
in 1819 by the Turkish viceroy of Egypt, but nearly sixty years passed before it made
the treacherous voyage, in its own purpose-built boat, all the way to London. It was
erected in 1878 above a time capsule containing, among other things, the day's
newspapers, a box of hairpins, a railway timetable and pictures of the country's
twelve prettiest women.
Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
6-8 John Adam St • Tours by appointment only •
T
020 7930 5115,
W
thersa.org •
!
Charing Cross or Embankment
Founded in 1754, the “Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce”, better known now as the Royal Society of Arts or
RSA
, moved into a
purpose-built, elaborately decorated house designed by the Adam brothers in 1774.
The building contains a small display on the Adelphi and retains several original Adam
ceilings and chimneypieces. The highlight, however, is The Great Room, with six
paintings on
The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture
by James Barry, forming a
busy, continuous pictorial frieze around the room, punctuated by portraits of two early
presidents by Reynolds and Gainsborough. The RSA is one of a number of Adam
houses that survive from the magnificent riverside development built between 1768
and 1772 by the Adam brothers and known as the
Adelphi
, which was, for the most
part, demolished in 1936.
8
Benjamin Franklin House
36 Craven St • Architectural tours Mon noon, 1, 2, 3.15 & 4.15pm Historical Experience Wed-Sun noon, 1, 2, 3.15 & 4.15pm • £7 •
T
020 7925 1405,
W
benjaminfranklinhouse.org •
!
Charing Cross or Embankment
From 1757 to 1775,
Benjamin Franklin
(1706-90) had “genteel lodgings” here.
While Franklin was espousing the cause of the British colonies (as the US then was),
the house served as the first de facto American embassy; eventually, he returned to
America to help draft the Declaration of Independence and frame the US
Constitution. On Mondays, the emphasis is on the
Benjamin Franklin House
's
architecture and restoration, as well as Franklin's own story. For the Historical
Experience, a costumed guide and a series of impressionistic audiovisuals transport
visitors back to the time of Franklin, who lived here with his “housekeeper” in cosy
domesticity, while his wife and daughter languished in Philadelphia.
Aldwych
The wide crescent of
Aldwych
, forming a neat “D” on its side with the eastern part of
the Strand, was driven through the slums of this zone in the early twentieth century. A
confident ensemble occupies the centre, with the enormous Australia House and India
House sandwiching
Bush House
, home of the BBC's World Service from 1940 to 2012.
Despite its thoroughly British associations, Bush House was actually built by the
American speculator Irving T. Bush, whose planned trade centre flopped in the 1930s.
The giant figures on the north facade and the inscription, “To the Eternal Friendship of
English-Speaking Nations”, thus refer to the friendship between the US and Britain,
and are not, as many people assume, the World Service's declaratory manifesto.
Not far from these former bastions of Empire, up Houghton Street, lurks that
erstwhile hotbed of left-wing agitation, the
London School of Economics
. Founded in
1895, the LSE gained a radical reputation in 1968, when a student sit-in protesting
against the Vietnam War ended in violent confrontations that were the closest London
