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St James's Palace
The striking Tudor gatehouse of St James's Palace, the only surviving part of a building initiated by the palace-mad Henry VIII in 1530, is best approached from St James's St to the north of the park. This was the official residence of kings and queens for more than three centuries and foreign ambassadors are still formally accredited to the Court of St James, although the tea and biscuits are actually served at Buckingham Palace.
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St James's Park
This is one of the smallest but most gorgeous of London's parks. It has brilliant views of the London Eye, Westminster, St James's Palace, Carlton Terrace and Horse Guards Parade, and the view of Buckingham Palace from the footbridge spanning St James's Park Lake is the best you'll find (get those cameras out).
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St James's Piccadilly
The only church Christopher Wren built from scratch and on a new site (most of the others were replacements for ones razed in the Great Fire), this simple building is exceedingly easy on the eye and substitutes what some might call the pompous flourishes of his most famous churches with a warm and elegant user-friendliness. The spire, although designed by Wren, was added only in 1968.
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St John's Gate
What looks like a toy-town medieval gate cutting across St John's Lane turns out to be the real thing. It dates from the early 16th century but was heavily restored 300 years later. During the Crusades, the Knights of St John of Jerusalem were soldiers who took on a nursing role. In Clerkenwell they established a priory that originally covered around four hectares.
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St John's Smith Square
In the heart of Westminster, this eye-catching church was built by Thomas Archer in 1728 under the Fifty New Churches Act (1711), which aimed to build 50 new churches for London's rapidly growing metropolitan area. Though they never did build all 50 churches, St John's, along with a dozen others, saw the light of day.
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St Katharine's Dock
With its cafés and restaurants, St Katharine's Dock makes an ideal spot to pause for a brief rest after a morning's sightseeing at Tower Bridge or the Tower of London. There's a row of twee shops and a popular pub called the Dickens Inn but it's more entertaining just admiring some of the opulent luxury yachts in the marina.
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St Lawrence Jewry
To look at the Corporation of London's extremely well-preserved official church, you'd barely realise that it was almost completely destroyed during WWII. Instead, it does Sir Christopher Wren, who built it in 1678, and its subsequent restorers proud, with its immaculate alabaster walls and gilt trimmings. The arms of the City of London adorn the organ above the door at the western end.
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St Martin-in-the-Fields
The 'royal parish church' is a delightful fusion of classical and baroque styles that was completed by James Gibbs (1682-1754) in 1726. A around £36 million refurbishment project, completed in October 2007, sees a new entrance pavilion and foyer, several new areas at the rear of the church, including spaces offering social care (many homeless and destitute people rely on the church's help), and a lovely 'contemplative space' accessible to the public.
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St Pancras Chambers
Its current rundown surroundings make it tempting to describe this Victorian Gothic masterpiece as the poor cousin of the Houses of Parliament. But it's an unusual building nonetheless. Today it constitutes part of St Pancras' train station and with the adjacent Eurostar Terminal due to have opened in late 2007, it's partly being redeveloped into the same thing George Gilbert Scott built it for in 1876 - a hotel.
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St Pancras International
If you use the tube for any length of time, chances are you'll pass through King's Cross St Pancras station, in which case you should rise to the surface and check out this fabulously imposing Victorian Gothic masterpiece, which was built as a hotel by the renowned architect George Gilbert Scott in 1876.
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St Paul's Cathedral
Occupying a superb position atop Ludgate Hill, one of London's most recognisable buildings is Sir Christopher Wren's masterwork, completed in 1710 after the previous building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The cathedral is undergoing a huge restoration project to coincide with its 300th anniversary in 2010, so some parts may be under scaffold when you visit.
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St Peter's Church
This wonderful Norman church has been a place of worship for 1300 years and parts of the present structure date from 1266. It's a fascinating place, not least for its curious Georgian box pews, which local landowners would rent while the serving staff and labourers sat in the open seats in the south transept.
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Staple Inn
The 16th-century shop front facade is the main interest at Staple Inn (1589), the last of eight Inns of Chancery whose functions were superseded by the Inns of Court in the 18th century. The buildings, mostly postwar reconstructions, are now occupied by the Institute of Actuaries and aren't open to the public, but nobody seems to mind a discreet and considerate look around.
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Sunday Up Market & Truman Brewery
The Old Truman Brewery was once London's largest, but since the early 1990s it has been home to a host of creative businesses. Today you'll find shops, bars and a Sunday barbecue along Dray Walk, bordering the building. Inside is the Up Market, housing many stallholders who lost plots in the main Spitalfields Market when the new retail development there moved in. It's more of the same young designer fashion, but with loads more space to breath between stalls.
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Sutton House
It's difficult to imagine well-heeled Tudor noblemen such as Thomas Sutton, founder of the Charterhouse almshouse, living in 'ackney, but as East London's oldest surviving house proves, they did, and in some style too. Abandoned and taken over by squatters in the 1980s (who have left behind a large mural of an eye in the attic), it's since been put under the care of the National Trust and magnificently restored.
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Syon House
Just across the Thames from Kew Gardens, Syon House started life as a medieval abbey named after Mt Zion, but in 1542 Henry VIII dissolved the order of Bridgettine nuns peacefully established there and had the abbey rebuilt into a handsome residence. (In 1547, they say, God got his revenge when Henry's coffin was brought to Syon en route to Windsor for burial and burst open during the night, leaving the king's body to the estate's hungry dogs.)
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Tate Britain
You'd think that Tate Britain may have suffered since its lavish, sexy sibling, Tate Modern, took half its collection and all of the limelight up river when it opened in 2000, but on the contrary, things have worked out perfectly for both galleries. The venerable Tate Britain, built in 1897, stretched out splendidly into the increased space with its definitive collection of British art from the 16th to the late 20th centuries.
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Tate Modern
The public's love affair with this phenomenally successful modern art gallery shows no sign of waning. Serious art critics have occasionally swiped at its populism (eg Carl Höller's funfair-like slides, Olafur Eliasson's participatory The Weather Project , both in the vast Turbine Hall) and poked holes in its collection. But 5 million visitors make it the world's most popular contemporary art gallery, and London's most visited sight.
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Temple Church
This magnificent church lies within the walls of the Temple, built by the legendary Knights Templar, an order of crusading monks founded in the 12th century to protect pilgrims travelling to and from Jerusalem. The order moved here around 1160, abandoning its older headquarters in Holborn.
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Thames Flood Barrier
The sci-fi looking Thames Flood Barrier is in place to protect London from flooding, and with global warming increasing the city's vulnerability to rising sea levels and surge tides, the barrier is likely to be of growing importance in coming years. Under construction for a decade and completed in 1982, the barrier consists of 10 movable gates anchored to nine concrete piers, each as tall as a five-storey building.
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The Garden Museum
In a city holding out the broad attractions of Kew Gardens, the modest Museum of Garden History housed in the church of St Mary-at-Lambeth is mainly for the seriously green-thumbed. Its trump card is the charming knot garden, a replica of a 17th-century formal garden, with topiary hedges clipped into an intricate, twirling design.
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Tower Bridge
Perhaps second only to Big Ben as London's most recognisable symbol, Tower Bridge doesn't disappoint up close. There's something about its neo-Gothic towers and blue suspension struts that that make it quite enthralling to look at. Built in 1894 as a much-needed crossing point in the east, it was equipped with a then revolutionary bascule (seesaw) mechanism that could clear the way for oncoming ships in three minutes.
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Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
Opened in 1841, this 13-hectare cemetery was the last of the so-called Magnificent Seven, then-suburban cemeteries (including Highgate and Abney Park in Stoke Newington) created by act of Parliament in response to London's rapid population growth and overcrowded burial grounds. Some 270,000 souls were laid to rest here until the cemetery was closed for burials in 1966 and turned into a park and nature reserve.
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Tower of London
With a history as bleak and bloody as it is fascinating, the Tower of London should be first on anyone's list of London's sights. Despite ever-growing ticket prices and the hoards of tourists that descend here in summer months, this is one of those rare pleasures: somewhere worth the hype. Throughout the ages, murder and political skulduggery have reigned as much as kings and queens, so tales of imprisonment and executions will pepper your trail.
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Trinity Buoy Wharf
London's only lighthouse, built for Michael Faraday in 1863, is located at this brown field site about a mile northeast of Canary Wharf. Also here is the unusual Container City, a community of artists' studios made from brightly painted shipping containers, stacked side by side and one on top of the other. The web designers, architects and other creative tenants even have their own balconies.
