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30 St Mary Axe
Known to one and all as 'the Gherkin' for obvious reasons when you see its incredible shape, 30 St Mary Axe - as it is officially and far more prosaically named - remains London's most distinctive skyscraper, dominating the city despite actually being slightly smaller than the neighbouring NatWest Tower. The phallic Gherkin's futuristic, sci-fi exterior has become an emblem of modern London as recognisable as Big Ben or the London Eye.
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Abney Park Cemetery
Unfairly dubbed by some as 'the poor man's Highgate', this magical place has been left to fend for itself since the 1950s and is as much a bird and plant sanctuary as a delightfully overgrown ruin. The derelict chapel at the heart of the park could be straight out of a horror film, and the atmosphere of the whole place is nothing short of enchanting.
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Admiralty Arch
From Trafalgar Square, the Mall passes under this grand Edwardian monument, a triple-arched stone entrance designed by Aston Webb in 1910. Webb also worked on Buckingham Palace. The large central gate is opened only for royal processions and state visits, but pedestrians can pass through the smaller outer arches.
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Albert Memorial
This memorial is as over-the-top as the subject, Queen Victoria's German husband Albert (1819-61), was purportedly humble. Albert explicitly said he did not want a monument and 'if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy'.
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Battersea Power Station
Familiar to an entire generation from Pink Floyd's 1977 Animals album cover, with the four smokestacks that somewhat resemble a table turned upside down, Battersea Power Station is a building both loved and reviled. Built by Giles Gilbert Scott with two chimneys in 1933 (the other two were added in 1955), it ceased operations in 1983 and since then there have been innumerable proposals to give it a new life.
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Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the iconic building from which the BBC began radio broadcasting in 1932, and where much of the BBC's radio output still comes from. There's a shop stocking any number of products relating to BBC programmes, even though the majority of the Beeb's output is produced in the corporation's glassy complex in Shepherd's Bush (hop on the website if you want to get tickets to a recording).
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Buckingham Palace
Built in 1705 as Buckingham House for the duke of the same name, this palace has provided the royal family's London lodgings since 1837, when St James's Palace was judged too old-fashioned and insufficiently impressive. It is dominated by the 25m-high Queen Victoria Memorial at the end of the Mall. Tickets for the palace are on sale from a kiosk in Green Park.
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Canary Wharf Tower
Cesar Pelli's 244m-high Canary Wharf Tower, built in 1991, described as a 'square prism with a pyramidal top', presides over a toy-town, financial theme park, surrounded by more recent towers housing HSBC and Citigroup, and offices for Bank of America, Barclays, Lehmann Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and more. It took a long time for the place to come this far, even.
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Cenotaph
The Cenotaph (Greek for 'empty tomb'), built in 1920 by Edwin Lutyens, is Britain's main memorial to the British and Commonwealth victims who were killed during the two world wars. The Queen and other public figures lay poppies at its base on the Sunday nearest 11 November.
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City Hall
Glass-clad City Hall, designed by Sir Norman Foster and Ken Shuttleworth, is transparent in both the figurative and literal senses. There's a visitors centre ( - ) on the lower ground floor, which also includes the 'London Photomat', an aerial photo of 1000 sq metres of the city stuck to the floor and large enough for you to walk on and pick out individual buildings, and a café looking onto an outside amphitheatre.
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Great Fire Memorial
This statue of a corpulent boy has a rather odd dedication: 'In memory put up for the fire of London occasioned by the sin of gluttony 1666'. All becomes clear when you realise the Great Fire was started in a busy bakery. The Fortune of War tavern once stood on this site, and 'resurrectionists' brought corpses here to be sold to surgeons.
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Greenwich Foot Tunnel
Looked at objectively, this is just a pedestrian tunnel, built in 1902. But it's made quite thrilling by virtue of crossing beneath the River Thames. The echoing footsteps create a certain frisson and, thanks to the tunnel's slope, you see oncoming pedestrians' feet before their faces are revealed. (Although there's CCTV security, those prone to claustrophobia probably won't enjoy the experience.)
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Guildhall
Bang in the centre of the Square Mile, the Guildhall has been the City's seat of government for nearly 800 years. The present building dates from the early 15th century, making it the only secular stone structure to have survived the Great Fire of 1666, although it was severely damaged both then and during the Blitz of 1940.
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Holborn Viaduct
This fine iron bridge was built in 1869 in an effort to smarten up the area, as well as to link Holborn and Newgate St above what had been a valley created by the River Fleet. The four bronze statues represent Commerce and Agriculture (on the northern side) and Science and Fine Arts (on the south).
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Houses of Parliament
The House of Commons and House of Lords are housed here in the sumptuous Palace of Westminster. Charles Barry, assisted by interior designer Augustus Pugin, built it between 1840 and 1860, when the extravagant neo-Gothic style was all the rage. The most famous feature outside the palace is the Clock Tower, commonly known as Big Ben.
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Inner Temple
Duck under the archway next to Prince Henry's Room and you'll find yourself in the Inner Temple, a sprawling complex of some of the finest buildings on the river. The church was originally planned and built by the secretive Knights Templar between 1161 and 1185. At the weekend you'll usually have to enter from the Victoria Embankment.
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Lloyd's of London
While the world's leading insurance brokers are inside underwriting everything from trains, planes and ships to cosmonauts' lives and film stars' legs, people outside still stop to gawp at the stainless steel external ducting and staircases of the Lloyd's of London building. French free climber, or 'spiderman', Alain Robert even felt moved to scale the exterior with his bare hands in 2003.
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London Eye
It takes a gracefully slow 30 minutes and, weather permitting, you can see 25 miles in every direction from the top of the world's tallest Ferris wheel. To the west lies Windsor, while to the east the sea. In between, you have the chance to pick out familiar landmarks. A ride in one of the wheel's 32 glass-enclosed gondolas holding up to 25 people is something you really can't miss if you want to say you've 'done' London.
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Marble Arch
John Nash designed this huge arch in 1827. It was moved here, to the northeastern corner of Hyde Park, from its original spot in front of Buckingham Palace in 1851, when it was adjudged too small and unimposing to be the entrance to the royal manor. There's a one-room flat inside, London's grandest bedsit. If you're feeling anarchic, walk through the central portal, a privilege reserved for the royal family by law.
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Michelin House
The superb Art Nouveau Michelin House was built for Michelin between 1905 and 1911 by François Espinasse, and completely restored in 1985. The ground floor provides space for upmarket fish and flower stalls, the famous roly-poly Michelin Man appears in the modern stained glass, and the lobby is decorated with tiles showing early-20th-century cars.
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Mile End Park
The 32-hectare Mile End Park is a long, narrow green space wedged between Burdett and Grove Rds and the Grand Union Canal. Landscaped to great effect during the millennium year, the centrepiece, is architect Piers Gough's 'green bridge' linking the northern and southern sections of the park over busy Mile End Rd. The bridge itself is actually yellow - the 'green' refers to the trees and shrubs that have been planted along its walkway.
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Millennium Bridge
Forever doomed to be known as the 'wobbly' bridge, although it's been perfectly stable for many years, the Millennium Bridge has become a much-admired feature of the 21st-century London skyline. It now carries some 10,000 people a day…and unfortunately they all seem to be on it the same time as you! Don't forget to look at St Paul's Cathedral through the Perspex decking at the bridge's southern end.
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No 2 Willow Rd
Fans of modern architecture will want to swing past this property, the central house in a block of three, designed by the 'structural rationalist' Ernö Goldfinger in 1939 as his family home. The interior, with its cleverly designed storage space and collection of artworks by Henry Moore, Max Ernst and Bridget Riley, is certainly interesting and accessible to all.
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Piccadilly Circus
Together with Big Ben and Trafalgar Sq, this is postcard London. And despite the stifling crowds and racing midday traffic, the flashing ads and buzzing liveliness of Piccadilly Circus always make it exciting to be in London. The circus looks its best at night, when the flashing advertisement panels really shine against the dark sky.
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Princess Diana Memorial Fountain
The drama surrounding this memorial seems a predictably fraught postscript to a life that itself often hovered between the Sun's headlines, Greek tragedy and farce. Envisaged as a 'moat without a castle' (reflecting the Princess's supposed spiritual state?) draped 'like a necklace' (her elegance?) around Hyde Park near the Serpentine Bridge, this circular double stream had to be shut just a fortnight after it opened in 2004.
