Monuments in London
2 monuments to discover with Bad Historian in London.
The Monument
That tall stone column with the golden flaming ball on top is the Monument, built to remember the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty-six, the fire that burned most of the city to the ground. It's a memorial.
The Monument & Pudding Lane
That column is the Monument, and it's exactly two hundred and two feet tall — which is exactly its own distance from a spot just up the road called Pudding Lane.
London Audio Experiences
Visit these monuments and more on a self-guided audio experience.
Greenwich
The place where the whole planet agreed what time it is. A racing ship named after a witch's nightie, nearly destroyed by a vacuum cleaner. A palace Wren sliced in half so a queen could keep her view. A self-taught carpenter who beat Britain's top scientists — who cheated to stop him. And an anarchist who tried to bomb time itself and only blew up his own hand. Time, longitude and the Prime Meridian — with a few details the Bad Historian invented.
How London Was Built
Every toilet in London still flushes through Victorian sewers built by a man who doubled the pipe size on a hunch — whose great-great-grandson gave Britain Big Brother. The Tube map is a beautiful, deliberate lie copied all over the world. You can ride a train through an 1843 tunnel dug by copying a shipworm. And the old London Bridge is baking in the Arizona desert. The hidden engineering that holds the city up — plus a few details the Bad Historian invented.
St Paul's & the Great Fire of London
In 1666 this whole city burned to the ground in four days — and they hanged a man for it who wasn't even in the country when it started. A golden grasshopper has survived being burned down twice. A goose dodged the slaughterhouse for 38 years and got a funeral. And a cathedral rebuilt by an astronomer refused to fall during the Blitz while everything around it burned. How London burned and rose again — plus a few details the Bad Historian invented.
The East End & Whitechapel
One building here was a French church, then a synagogue, then a mosque — the same walls handed down through wave after wave of refugees. Big Ben and the American Liberty Bell were cast in the same tiny Whitechapel yard. The 'Elephant Man' built a paper cathedral with one hand. And the most feared gangster in London shot a man dead in a pub, steps from where the Salvation Army was born. The real East End — refugees, rebels, and the Kray twins — with a few details the Bad Historian invented.
The South Bank
The rowdy south shore London kept its theatres, brothels, and prisons on — now a power station full of art, a wheel that was 'temporary' for twenty-four years, a warship the government tried to scrap, and the tallest tower in Western Europe. Shakespeare's Globe, Tate Modern, Borough Market, HMS Belfast, and a few details the Bad Historian invented.
Westminster & Big Ben
Big Ben is a cracked bell they never fixed. There's a spot near Parliament where a toilet was secretly a phone to the President of the United States. Real hippos are buried under Trafalgar Square. And a teenager once broke into Buckingham Palace to steal the royal underwear. Seven of the most photographed places in Britain, and the parts the guidebooks leave out — with a few small details the Bad Historian invented, revealed at the end.
Hear the stories behind these places
Download the app for audio-guided experiences of London's monuments.
Get the App