Tower of London to St Paul's: An Ancient Square Mile Walking Tour

London's ancient streets hold 2000 years of history just beneath, and above the surface. On this walking tour from the Tower of London to St Paul's, you'll trace the city's layered past through Roman ruins, Great Fire landmarks, and the Georgian financial institutions that made London the world's commercial capital.

The tour starts outside the Tower of London, heading through the medieval lanes and grand main streets of the old city. Along the way, you'll pass the entrance to the Victorian Tower subway, step inside the ruins of St Dunstan in the East – a bombed-out church now open to the sky as a public garden – and follow the riverfront past the Custom House, where Geoffrey Chaucer once worked as controller of customs. You'll wind through narrow alleys lined with centuries-old pubs before arriving at Bank Junction, where the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, and Mansion House cluster together.

The route takes you through the medieval trading streets of Lombard Street and Birchin Lane, through courtyard alleys that once housed the city's first coffee houses, and along Roman Watling Street toward St Paul's. The tour ends in the small garden beside Admiral Arthur Phillip's statue, with Wren's great Cathedral rising ahead of you.

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

• Explore St Dunstan in the East, a Wren-designed church whose surviving Gothic tower has stood since 1703
• Visit the Monument to the Great Fire of London, whose 212-foot column commemorates the disastrous events of September 1666
• Discover how Lloyd's of London grew from a Lombard Street coffee shop first recorded in 1682 to the global insurance market of today
• Walk through St Michael's Alley to the Jamaica Wine House, built on the site of London's first coffee shop
• Learn how the Billingsgate fish porters' leather hats were modelled on headwear worn at the Battle of Agincourt
• See the London Mithraeum, a Roman temple to Mithras buried seven metres beneath the city's current streets
• Explore some of the buildings at the centre of the City of London as they overlook the Bank junction as shown on the main photo

This tour packs Roman London, medieval merchants, and the architects who rebuilt the city after 1666 into a two-mile walk that rewards anyone curious about what lies behind the city's familiar skyline.