Tate Modern occupies a former power station on the south bank of the Thames, and the building's history is inseparable from its neighbourhood.

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed the oil-fired Bankside Power Station between 1947 and 1963, the same architect behind Battersea Power Station and Waterloo Bridge. It closed in 1981 as oil prices made it unviable, then sat derelict until Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron converted it into a gallery, opening in 2000.

They preserved Scott's 99-metre chimney and turned the vast turbine hall into one of the most dramatic interior spaces in Britain. Bankside has long operated outside the City of London's jurisdiction, which once made it the natural address for brothels, bear-baiting rings and Shakespeare's playhouses. The power station fits neatly into that tradition.

VoiceMap's South Bank tours trace this riverside stretch from the Monument to the Great Fire through Southwark's medieval entertainments to Tate Modern, placing the gallery at the end of four centuries of things the City would rather not look at directly.