Symbols of the City: Decoding Two Thousand Years of London

The City of London packs nearly 2,000 years of history into a single square mile, and most of it is hiding in plain sight. On this walking tour, you'll follow the area's story through its overlooked details – a medieval carved boy on a coffee shop wall, Roman ruins below a Victorian market, and church towers turned private homes. You'll also discover how the City's unique powers of self-governance, its livery companies, and its coffeehouses shaped the modern world.

The tour starts outside St Paul's tube station, where a 17th-century carved stone plaque called the Panyer Boy sits largely unnoticed on a Caffè Nero wall. From here, you'll head through Postman's Park, where a remarkable memorial honours ordinary Londoners who died saving others, then wind through the Goldsmiths' Garden – a bombsite turned green space – where two neighbouring livery halls share a centuries-old grudge dating back to World War II incendiary bombs.

Along the way, you'll stand in Guildhall Yard, where a medieval Great Hall, a Roman amphitheatre, and William the Conqueror's original city charter occupy the same site. You'll then follow the medieval market street of Cheapside, whose side streets – Bread Street, Milk Street, Friday Street – still bear the names of what was once sold there. The tour ends inside Leadenhall Market, an ornate Victorian structure built over the Roman basilica where Londinium's city council once governed.

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

• Spot the only green postbox in London, a replica Victorian Penfold design outside the old General Post Office
• Peer over a waist-high wall at the remains of a Roman fort dating to 110AD, buried next to a Blitz bombsite on Noble Street
• Hear the surprisingly violent history of St Mary le Bow, from a medieval tornado to a rogue knight setting the church alight
• Learn how London's first coffeehouse, opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley, gave birth to Lloyd's of London
• Find the George and Vulture, a pub mentioned over twenty times in Dickens' Pickwick Papers, still stubbornly wedged between modern office blocks
• See the Royal Exchange pediment's carved figure of an enslaved person, the only physical representation of slavery in the City of London

By the end of this tour, you'd have your eyes opened to some of London's most fascinating historical symbology.