Barbican

Londoners remain fairly divided about the architectural legacy of this vast housing and cultural complex in the heart of the City. While the Barbican is named after a Roman fortification protecting ancient Londinium that may once have stood here, what you see here today is very much a product of the 1960s and ‘70s. Built on a huge bombsite abandoned since WWII and opened progressively between 1969 and 1982, it’s fair to say that its brutalist concrete isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Yet, although it topped several recent polls as London’s ugliest building, many Londoners see something very beautiful about its cohesion and ambition – incorporating Shakespeare’s local church, St Giles Cripplegate, into its brave-new-world design and embellishing its public areas with lakes and ponds. The Barbican is much better loved than London’s other modernist colossus, the South Bank Centre. Trendy urban architects have long prized apartments here, and the residences in the three high-rise towers that ring the cultural centre are some of the city’s most sought-after living spaces. Home of the London Symphony Orchestra and one of the best places to see dance in the capital, the Barbican is still London’s pre-eminent cultural centre, boasting three cinemas that show a combination of commercial and independent films, two theatres, which feature touring drama as well as dance performances, and the highly regarded Barbican Gallery, which stages excellent temporary exhibitions.