Westminster - Heart of the Nation

Westminster is where Britain's political and religious power has been concentrated for nearly a thousand years. On this walking tour, you'll trace the area's story from the monarchy's great riverside palaces to the seat of parliamentary democracy. You'll also hear about the engineers, activists, and architects who shaped the city around them.

The tour starts at Embankment Underground Station, beside the Thames. You'll walk past the Banqueting House – the sole surviving wing of the vast Whitehall Palace – and learn why its architect, Inigo Jones, was so radical for his time. You'll cross Westminster Bridge, where Wordsworth penned his famous sonnet, then make your way along the riverbank past war memorials and into Parliament Square, where centuries of political drama played out.

From there, you'll explore Westminster Abbey's exterior and St Margaret's Church, the parish church of the House of Commons, before following the Thames south toward Lambeth Bridge. You'll cross the river and arrive at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury since the 1200s. The tour ends at Morton's Gate, the Tudor red-brick gateway built in 1501 by the Archbishop who invented one of history's more cunning tax schemes.

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

• Learn how Sir Joseph Bazalgette's Victorian sewer network ended London's cholera epidemics and saved thousands of lives
• Visit the spot where Charles I was publicly executed on Cromwell's orders in 1649
• See the building where Ian Fleming worked during World War II – reportedly from an office numbered 007
• Spot the MI5 and MI6 headquarters, hiding in plain sight on opposite sides of the river
• Discover Emmeline Pankhurst's statue, and hear how the suffragette movement won women the right to vote
• Explore the Museum of Garden History, housed in a medieval church that was nearly demolished in the 1970s
• See Rodin's Burghers of Calais, cast in blackened bronze against the golden stone of the Victoria Tower

This walk packs an extraordinary amount of British history into a compact riverside route – royal intrigue, democratic struggle, and plenty of stories your guidebook probably missed.