Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
open-air ice rink in winter and as a performance space in summer. Continuing north
to
Exchange Square
, you'll find a cascading waterfall, the hefty
Broadgate Venus
by
Fernando Botero, and Xavier Corbero's
Broad Family
of obelisks, one of whose
“children” reveals a shoe.
Bishopsgate Institute
230 Bishopsgate • Mon-Fri 9am-8.30pm, Sat 10am-5.30pm • Free •
T
020 7392 9200,
W
bishopsgate.org.uk •
!
Liverpool Street
Across the road from Liverpool Street Station is the faïence facade of the diminutive
Bishopsgate Institute
, a graceful Art Nouveau building designed by Harrison
Townsend. Townsend went on to design the excellent Whitechapel Art Gallery (see
p.198) and the wonderful Horniman Museum (see p.313). Opened in 1895, the
institute houses a public library and puts on courses and talks throughout the year.
St Ethelburga's
78 Bishopsgate • Fri 11am-3pm • Free •
T
020 7496 1610,
W
stethelburgas.org •
!
Liverpool Street
Hemmed in by of
ce blocks on either side is the “humble rag-faced front” of the
pre-Fire church of
St Ethelburga
. All but totally destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1993,
the church was totally rebuilt and now houses a Centre for Reconciliation and Peace,
hosting regular interfaith events and workshops, and hosting world music gigs. The
bare interior retains the nineteenth-century font inscribed with the Greek palindrome
“Cleanse my sins, not just my face” and half the tiny garden round the back, houses a
polygonal, multi-faith Bedouin tent covered in woven goat's hair.
11
St Helen's
Bishopsgate • Mon-Fri 9.30am-12.30pm • Free •
T
020 7283 2231,
W
st-helens.org.uk •
!
Liverpool Street, Bank, Monument or Aldgate
Another pre-Fire church that suffered extensive damage in the IRA blasts of the
1990s is the late Gothic church of
St Helen
,
set back to the east of Bishopsgate.
With its undulating crenellations and Baroque bell turret, it's an intriguing building,
incorporating the original pre-Reformation Benedictine nunnery church and
containing five grand pre-Fire tombs. Since the bomb, the floor level has been raised,
the church screens shifted, a new organ gallery added and the seating rearranged to
focus on the pulpit, in keeping with the church's current evangelical bent.
The Gherkin
30 St Mary Axe •
!
Liverpool Street or Aldgate
Completed in 2003, Norman Foster's glass-diamond-clad
Gherkin
remains one of the
most popular of the new rash of brash tall buildings in the City. Most Londoners like it
for its cheeky shape, though it's beginning to be hemmed in and upstaged by the
skyscrapers it helped encourage. O
cially known as
30 St Mary Axe
, the Gherkin sits
on the site of the old Baltic Exchange, destroyed in an IRA bomb in 1992 that killed
three people, commemorated on a nearby wall. At 590ft, it's actually pretty tall, but at
street level it appears a very modest building - you can't go up it, but you can grab a
bite to eat on the ground floor.
Lloyd's Building
1 Lime St • Guided tours by appointment; £10 •
T
020 7327 6586,
W
lloyds.com •
!
Bank or Monument
Completed by Richard Rogers in 1986, the
Lloyd's Building
, opposite St Andrew
Undershaft, remains probably the City's most innovative and remarkable o
ce block.
“A living, breathing machine”, it's a vertical version of Rogers and Renzo Piano's
Parisian Pompidou Centre, in which the jumble of blue-steel pipes and cables form the
outer casing, with glass lifts zipping up and down the exterior. The portico of the
previous, much more sedate, Lloyd's Building (c.1925) has been preserved on
Leadenhall Street, so the current headquarters represented a bizarre leap into the
modern by this most conservative of City institutions - the largest insurance and
