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Brompton Cemetery
As London's vast population exploded in the 19th century, seven new cemeteries opened, among them Brompton Cemetery, a long expanse running between Fulham Rd and Old Brompton Rd. There is a chapel and colonnades at one end, modelled after St Peter's in Rome. While the most famous resident is Emmeline Pankhurst, the pioneer of women's suffrage in Britain, the cemetery is most interesting as the inspiration for many of Beatrix Potter's characters.
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Brompton Oratory
Also known as the London Oratory and the Oratory of St Philip Neri, this Roman Catholic church was built in the Italian baroque style in 1884. It has marble, candles and statues galore, and Tony Blair is a regular. There are six daily Masses on weekdays, one at on Saturday, and nine between and on Sunday.
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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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Buddhapadipa Temple
A surprising sight in a residential neighbourhood half a mile from Wimbledon Village, this is as authentic a Thai temple as ever graced this side of Bangkok. The Buddhapadipa Temple was built by an association of young Buddhists in Britain and opened in 1982. The wat (temple compound) boasts a bot (consecrated chapel) decorated with traditional scenes by two leading Thai artists. Remember to take your shoes off before entering.
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Burgh House
If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, this late-17th-century Queen Anne mansion houses the Hampstead Museum of local history, a small art gallery and the delightful Buttery Garden Café ( - Wed-Sat), where you can get a decent and reasonably priced lunch.
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Cabinet War Rooms & Churchill Museum
You might be surprised how engaging you find the bunker where Prime Minister Winston Churchill met his cabinet and generals during WWII, especially now it's been joined by a whiz-bang exhibition devoted to 'the greatest Briton'. The Cabinet War Rooms, especially the bedrooms, evoke a period of deprivation and duty. Then comes: 'We will fight them on the beaches' and more in the Churchill Museum.
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Camden Market
What started out as a collection of attractive craft stalls by Camden Lock on the Grand Union Canal now extends most of the way from Camden Town tube station to Chalk Farm tube station to the north. You'll find a bit of everything but in particular a lot of tourist-oriented tat. It's completely mobbed at the weekend, and something preferably avoided on those days.
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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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Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey)
Just as fact is often better than fiction, taking in a trial in the Old Bailey leaves watching a TV courtroom drama for dust. 'The Old Bailey' is a byword for crime and notoriety. Even if you sit in on a fairly run-of-the-mill trial, simply being in the court where such people as the Kray twins and Oscar Wilde (in an earlier building on this site) once appeared is memorable in itself.
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Changing of the Guard
This is a London 'must see' - if you actually get to see anything from the crowds. The old guard (Foot Guards of the Household Regiment) comes off duty to be replaced by the new guard on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, and tourists get to gape - sometimes from behind as many as 10 people - at the bright red uniforms and bearskin hats of shouting and marching soldiers for just over half an hour.
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Charterhouse
You need to book nearly a year in advance to see inside this former Carthusian monastery, whose centrepiece is a Tudor hall with a restored hammer-beam roof. Its incredibly popular two-hour guided tours begin at the 14th-century gatehouse on Charterhouse Sq, before going through to the Great Chamber, where Queen Elizabeth I stayed on numerous occasions.
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Chelsea Football Club
There's something corporate and bland about the home of London's richest football club, Chelsea, but supporters after souvenir kit or a tour won't care. They'll be even more over the moon if they snaffle a rare available ticket to a match. There are two interlinked hotels in the building.
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Chelsea Old Church
This church is principally a monument to Thomas More (1477-1535), the former chancellor (and now Roman Catholic saint) who lost his head for refusing to go along with Henry VIII's plan to establish himself as supreme head of the Church of England.
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Chelsea Physic Garden
Aa secret garden in the midst of an urban jungle, established by the Apothecaries' Society in 1673 for students working on medicinal plants and healing. One of the oldest of its kind in Europe, Londoners are relatively ignorant of its existence, which means that the many rare trees, shrubs and plants are yours for quiet exploration.
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Chiswick House
This is a fine Palladian pavilion with an octagonal dome and colonnaded portico. It was designed by the third Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) when he returned from his grand tour of Italy, fired up with enthusiasm for all things Roman. Lord Burlington used it to entertain friends and to house his library and art collection.
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Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Rooms
Down in the bunker where Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his cabinet and generals met during WWII, around £6 million has been spent on a huge exhibition devoted to 'the greatest Briton'. This whizz-bang, multimedia Churchill Museum joins the highly evocative Cabinet War Rooms, where chiefs of staff slept, ate and plotted Hitler's downfall.
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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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Clapham Common
This large expanse of green is the heart of the Clapham neighbourhood. Mentioned both by Graham Greene in his novel The End of the Affair and Ian McEwan in his brilliant Atonement, it's now a venue for many outdoor summer events.
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Clarence House
After his beloved granny the Queen Mum died in 2002, Prince Charles got the tradesmen into her former home of Clarence House and spent around £4.6 million of taxpayers' money reshaping the house to his own design. Admission is by tour only, which must be booked (far in advance); book also for disabled access.
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Clink Prison Museum
Used to detain debtors, whores, thieves and even actors, this was the notorious address that gave us the expression 'in the clink' (in jail). The poky, rather hokey museum inside reveals the wretched life of the prisoners who were forced to pay for their own food and accommodation. There's a nice little collection of instruments of torture, too.
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County Hall
Begun in 1909, County Hall took more than five decades to complete. Today it contains an art museum and gallery, the vast London aquarium and two hotels.
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Cutty Sark
Rust and rot had been eating away at this Greenwich landmark, the last of the great clipper ships to sail between China and England in the 19th century, and she was undergoing £25 million repair work when disaster struck in May 2007. A fire, believed to have been deliberately set, damaged about 50% of the vessel.
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Dennis Severs' House
This quirky hotchpotch of a cluttered house is named after the late American eccentric who restored and turned it into what he called a 'still-life drama'. Visitors find they have entered the home of a 'family' of Huguenot silk weavers common to the Spitalfields area in the 18th century.
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Design Museum
In recent years this museum, founded by Sir Terence Conran 20 years ago and housed in a 1930s-era warehouse, has abandoned its permanent collection of 20th- and 21st-century objects to make way for a revolving programme of special exhibitions. The shows are populist - a display of Manolo Blahnik shoes; Formula One racing cars; the evolution and use of what is our favourite material in the world, Velcro - and also very popular.
