Tower Bridge is one of the world's most photographed structures, yet most visitors mistake it for London Bridge, which sits rather anonymously a few hundred metres upstream.

The confusion has history: when this gothic Victorian masterpiece opened in 1894, Londoners grumbled that its medieval fancy dress clashed with the sober city around it. The architects had disguised a cutting-edge steel frame behind stone cladding to appease the aesthetic sensibilities of the age.

The bridge's bascules, from the French word for seesaw, still rise around 800 times a year to let tall ships pass. Below, the Thames once ran so thick with sewage that Parliament had to close during the "Great Stink" of 1858, prompting the engineering revolution that cleaned up the river.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace Tower Bridge's connections to everything from Cold War espionage along the South Bank to the gruesome geography of Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel.