Classic Sights and Hidden Histories

London's most iconic landmarks are far more than impressive facades – each one hides stories of ambition, tragedy, and extraordinary human drama. On this walking tour, you'll uncover the true histories behind the city's most famous sights, from a palace built on a leper colony to a bell tower that nearly broke its architect's mind. You'll also hear how unlucky-in-love monarchs, a hard-drinking wartime leader, and a Catholic rebel with a fuse shaped the city you see today.

The tour starts at Green Park Underground Station, where you'll enter the Royal Park that Henry VIII – before his matrimonial troubles began – claimed from marshland. You'll pass Buckingham Palace, where Queen Victoria oversaw the installation of electricity and endured nine Nazi bombs, then reach St James's Palace, built in 1536 on the site of a medieval leper colony and disguised with fake turrets to appear grander than it was.

From there, you'll walk past the ivy-covered Admiralty Citadel, built with 20-foot-thick walls to serve as Britain's last redoubt if the Nazis had invaded, and the Cabinet War Rooms where Churchill coordinated Allied strategy on a daily diet of whisky, champagne, and port. You'll pass the rear entrance to 10 Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, above a plague pit holding 10,000 bodies. The tour ends at the Charles I statue in Trafalgar Square, said to mark the very centre of London, with Nelson's Column rising above you.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Learn how Big Ben got its name – and why it still rings with a crack in it
• Discover that Westminster Abbey was once a thorn-covered marsh island surrounded by a natural moat
• Hear how Guy Fawkes smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords
• Find out how the London Eye was assembled flat on the Thames and raised in a 48-hour operation
• See Westminster Bridge and spot St Paul's Cathedral, which survived a time-delayed Nazi bomb that left a 100-foot crater

By the time you reach Trafalgar Square, you'll see London's landmarks in a completely different light.