CULTURAL MAGAZINE

The London Eye

Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road
+44 (0)870 5000 600 Official website
Tube: Waterloo, Embankment, Charing Cross or Westminster

The London Eye, originally called the Millennium Wheelruota, opened in March 2000 as a temporary structure to help celebrate the new millennium. The wheel design was used as a metaphor for the end of the 20th century, and time turning into the new millennium. However, the attraction quickly became very popular and is now an iconic landmarkpunto di riferimento on the south banksponda of the Thames, and the UK’s most popular paid-for visitor attraction, visited by over 3.5 million people a year.
The wheel rises high above the London skyline at 135 metres, making it one of the highest observation wheels in the world, with wonderful views of Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden and more. When at the highest point you can see to around 40km (25 miles) into the distance, even as far as Windsor Castle on a clear day.
The London Eye has 32 capsules, representing the 32 boroughsquartieri of London, and each capsule carries up to 25 people. Capsules have 360 degree views and benchpanche seating. The London Eye can carry 800 passengers per revolution - equivalent to 11 London red
double-decker busesbus a due piani.
Each rotation takes about 30 minutes, meaning a capsule travels at 26cm per second, or 0.9km (0.6 miles) per hour - twice as fast as a tortoise sprinting; allowing passengers to step on and off without the wheel having to stop.
Sir Richard Rogers, one of the most celebrated British architects of our age, wrote of the London Eye in a book about the project:

“The Eye has done for London what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris, which is to give it a symbol and to let people climb above the city and look back down on it. Not just specialists or rich people, but everybody. That's the beauty of it: it is public and accessible, and it is in a great position at the heart of London.”

 

Madame Tussaud’s

Marylebone Road
+44 (0) 870 400 3000  Official website
Tube: Baker Street

London attracts A-list film stars, rockers, sports stars and many other celebrities from all over the world, and you can be almost sure of a sighting"avvistamento" of a famous face or two if you
hang aroundgironzoli, frequenti the city’s upmarket restaurants and clubs. However, there is one place in London where you can be sure to find yourself face to face with some of the most famous and influential people on earth: Madame Tussaud’s.
Originally called the Baker Street Bazaar, the attraction opened in 1835. Visitors paid sixpence for the chance to see the best known personalities of the day perfectly recreated
in waxcera by sculptor Marie Tussaud. Tussaud was born and brought upcresciuta in Strasbourg in France, and had been successfully touring her wax exhibitsmostre around Europe for 30 years. She visited London in 1802 but because of Britain’s war with France, she couldn’t return home. So she stayed and opened her wax museum. It was a runawayincontrollato success, and the attraction moved to its present site in Marylebone Road in 1884.
These days Madame Tussaud’s features incredibly realistic wax reproductions of film stars (there’s Jim Carrey and Leonardo Di Caprio standing near Audrey Hepburn); singers and bands (Freddie Mercury, Kylie Minogue and, of course, the Beatles are some of the most popular); sports stars (you can play golf with Tiger Woods or weigh in for a boxing match next to Mohammed Ali); there are world leaders from the past and present (President Obama stands in a recreated Oval Office, while Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill stand nearby).
One of the most popular elements of the museum (and one of the original exhibits of Marie Tussaud’s first Baker Street attraction) is the grislyorribile Chamber of Horrors, which details some of the gorysanguinose activities of infamous serial killers and murderers through history.
The attraction also features the history of London: visitors can take a replica London taxi and go on a time travelling journey through the history of the city. The ride starts in Tudor times and ends in the 1980s, passing through the times of Shakespeare, the Great Fire of London, the Industrial Revolution and the Swinging Sixties. Unforgettable!

 

The Victoria & Albert Museum (South Kensington)

Cromwell Road
+44 (0)20 7942 2000 Official website
Tube: South Kensington

The Victoria and Albert Museum (or The V&A for shortper abbreviare) is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design spanningche abbraccia 5000 years of art from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. A hundred and forty-five galleries covering 12.5 acres (0.05 km2) house over 4.5 million objects in its vast collection.
The museum first opened its doors in 1852 and was named after the reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, and her husband Prince Albert. After several changes of location, Queen Victoria officially opened the museum at its current site on 22nd June, 1857.
From its conception, the museum wanted to use its collections of applied art and science as educational resources to help boostspingere productive industry. This was seen as an important distinction from the high art of the National Gallery and the scholarship at the British Museum. In fact the year after it was opened by Queen Victoria, late night openings were introduced "to
ascertainconstatare, accertare practically what hours are most convenient to the working classes”.
In 2004 the V&A opened the first permanent gallery in the UK covering the history of architecture with displays using models, photographs, elements from buildings and original
drawingsdipinti. With over 600,000 drawings, over 750,000 papers and paraphernalia, and over 700,000 photographs from around the world, together they form the world's most comprehensive architectural resource. Not only are all the major British architects of the last four hundred years represented, but many European (especially Italian) and American architects' drawings are held in the collection. The holdings of drawings by Palladio are the largest in the world.
The Victoria & Albert Museum is splitdiviso into four Collections departments: Asia; Furniture, Textiles and Fashion; Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics & Glass; and Word & Image. These collection departments are further divided into sixteen display areas, whose combined collection numbers over 6.5 million objects. The museum has 145 galleries, but given the vast extent of the collections only a small percentage is ever on display.

 

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey,115-117 Victoria St
+44 845 765 4321 Official website
Tube: Westminster, St. James Park

(Text taken from the official website )
Westminster Abbey is a large gothic church just west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation of, and burialsepoltura site for, British monarchs.
The Abbey is also a final resting placeluogo di riposo for statesmenstatisti and soldiers; poets, priestssacerdoti, heroes and
villainsmalviventi - a veritable who's wholista dei personaggi celebri of British history. Over one million visitors a year come to the Abbey to explore this wonderful 700-year-old building.
According to historians, the Abbey was founded on Thorn Island in the time of Mellitus (who died in 624), Bishop of London. The location was chosen as the site of the new church because, legend tells us, a fishermanpescatore called Aldrich saw a vision of Saint Peter there. In the 960s or early 970s, Saint Dunstan established a community of Benedictine Monks here. A stone Abbey was built around 1045-1050 by King Edward the Confessor as part of his palace, and it was consecrated just a week before his death and burial. After the Norman invasion, the Abbey was rebuilt in the French Gothic style, 1245-1517.
Since the coronations in 1066 of both King Harold and William the Conqueror, all English and British monarchs (except Edward V and Edward VIII, who did not have coronations) have been
crownedincoronati in the Abbey. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the traditional cleric in the coronation ceremony.
At the moment of coronation, British sovereigns sit on King Edward’s Chair (also called St Edward's Chair). It has been used at every coronation since 1308 and it is housed permanently in the Abbey (except for a short time in 1950 when it was temporarily stolen by Scottish nationalists).
Aristocrats were buried inside chapels in the Abbey, and monks and people associated with the Abbey were buried in the Cloisters and other areas. One of these was Geoffrey Chaucer. Other poets and artists were buried or memorialized around Chaucer in what became known as Poets' Corner. These include: William Blake, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, John Dryden, George Eliot, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Gray, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, John Milton, Laurence Olivier, Alexander Pope, Nicholas Rowe, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Shadwell, William Shakespeare, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth.
Abbey musicians such as Henry Purcell were also buried in their place of work. Subsequently it became one of Britain's most significant honours to be buried or commemorated here. The practice spreadsi e' estesa from aristocrats and poets to generals, admirals, politicians, scientists, and doctors.

 

Houses of Parliament

Cromwell Green, St. Margaret Street
0844 847 1672 Official website
Tube: Westminster

(Text taken from the official website)
The Palace of Westminster is the site of the Houses of Parliament. It is also a palace, and the former residence of various English monarchs. The buildings that still exist today contain almost 1,200 rooms, 100 staircasesscale and more than two miles (three kilometres) of passages. Among the original historic buildings is Westminster Hall, used nowadays for major public ceremonial events.
The Palace of Westminster was the principal residence of the kings of England from the middle of the 11th century until 1512. In medieval times kings summonedconvocavano their courts wherever they happened to be. But by the end of the 14th century the court in all its aspects - administrative, judicial and parliamentary - had its headquarters at Westminster.
Although the Lords (who were traditionally inheritorseredi of an aristocratic title, but who these days are appointednominati) were accommodated in the Palace, the Commons (the members of parliament elected by the people) originally had no permanent meeting place of their own, meeting either in the chapter house or the refectoryrefettorio of Westminster Abbey. After the Chantries Act 1547 abolished all private chapels, the Royal Chapel of St Stephen within the Palace of Westminster was handed over to the Commons.
The Commons assembled in St Stephen's until 1834 when the Palace was burned down. This fire destroyed almost all of the Palace except Westminster Hall, the crypt of St Stephen's Chapel, the adjacent cloisterschiostri and the Jewel Tower.
The present Houses of Parliament were built over the next 30 years. They were the work of the architect Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) and his assistant Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-52). The design incorporated Westminster Hall and the remains of St Stephen's Chapel.
The House of Commons Chamber was destroyed in a German air attack in 1941. It was rebuilt after the Second World War, taking care to preserve the essential features of Barry's building - the architect was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. The new Chamber was completed in 1950.
Parliament is open to all members of the public. You can tour the buildings or climb the famous Clock Tower and see Big Ben.

 

The National Gallery

Trafalgar Square
020 7747 2885 Official website
Tube: Charing Cross, Leicester Square or Embankment

The National Gallery holds one of the greatest collections in the world of Western European art from the mid-thirteenth century to 1900. Like many museums in London, entrance to the gallery is
free of chargegratuita: visitors only pay for the (excellent) temporary exhibitions.
The institution was establishede' stata fondata in 1824, when the British government bought 36 paintings from the banker John Julius Angerstein. Successive directors of the gallery subsequently decided which paintings they wanted to purchasecomprare, and the collection was also enlarged with a significant number of private donations. In fact, two thirds of the paintings in the current collection is comprised of private donations. The result is a wide, eclectic collection of 2,300 works of most major developments and artists in western painting, including Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, and so many others. The gallery is an art history book brought to life!
Just like the collection it houses, the present National Gallery building has been expanded
piecemealun po' alla volta, gradualmente since it was first built in 1838.  It was designed by William Wilkins, but only the neoclassical façadefacciata (derivato dal francese) which looks out over Nelson’s Column and the rest of Trafalgar Square is unchanged. The most significant recent addition was the Sainsbury Wing, built in 1991. The building occupies the "Hampton's site" to the west of the main building, where a department store of the same name had stood until it was blown upe' stato fatto esplodere in the Blitzbombardamento aereo of 1940-41.