Victoria Embankment Gardens exist because Victorian London smelled so appalling that Parliament fled the building.

When the Great Stink of 1858 made the Thames unbearable, engineer Joseph Bazalgette designed a sewer system that pushed the river's shoreline back by some 30 metres, creating new land in the process. These gardens occupy that reclaimed ground between Hungerford Bridge and the Temple, a green strip that runs along what used to be the river.

The gardens are scattered with statues and memorials, from Robert Burns to the Imperial Camel Corps, and the nearby York Water Gate stands marooned inland as evidence of how dramatically the shoreline shifted. Once a grand river entrance for aristocrats, it now sits 150 yards from the water.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace this transformation, explaining how a sanitation crisis accidentally gave London one of its most pleasant riverside walks.