Open House weekend: Inside the City

For one weekend every September, London buildings of architectural note which are (mostly) normally off-limits to the public open their doors. Open House London first began in 1992, and has expanded its repertoire of sights over the years, with visitors able to explore everything from eco-friendly private homes to town halls to theatres all over Greater London - for free.

After learning about the history and architecture of the City of London on Context's Portrait of a City walk a couple of week's ago, I decided to return to the area and take this opportunity to actually go inside some of the buildings we discussed in detail. Starting at Guildhall Art Gallery (normally £2.50; free on Friday), I skipped through the dull-looking collection of Victorian paintings (lots of twee ladies looking ready to faint from too-tight corsets) and made my way down to the basement, where the remains of a Roman amphitheatre uncovered in 1988 hide. Left behind is some of the walkway graced by Russell Crowe's predecessors and the remains of stone walls which supported the timber seating for spectators: more than 5000 at a time, experts believe. A small exhibition explains more about the games that took place in Roman amphitheatres, London in Roman times and the excavations that uncovered the amphitheatre.

Lloyd's Building

Deciding not to join the painfully slow queue to visit the financial palace that is the Bank of England, I opted instead to venture inside the Richard Rogers-designed Lloyd's Building. Opened in 1986, the building was certainly a radical move for such a British institution as Lloyd's; it being one of Rogers' creations that follows his usual aesthetic of locating all the 'workings' of the building, such as pipes and lifts, on the outside. When I first came face to face with the building on the Context walk, it put me in mind of a scaled-down, smartened-up version of the Puleva dairy products factory I used to pass on the bus from my former home in scenic Alcala de Guadaira to Seville. Open to the public on just one day each year, a view of the inside was definitely worth queuing for though: a surprising combination of post-modern and traditional not at all reminiscent of a dairy factory.

View from 'The Room'

The Open House self-guided visit began in 'The Room', an open-plan office space on the first floor where Lloyd's underwriters huddle together on cramped workstations. Contrasting with the modern workspaces are the ornate wooden clock which dominates one end of the room, and the mahogany rostrum which came from the 1928 Lloyd's building. Hanging inside the pillared structure of the rostrum is the Lutine Bell, traditionally rung to alert staff to important news (so much more elegant than a round robin email); one stroke signalling bad tidings, two for glad. The bell was on board the HMS Lutine when she sank with her cargo of gold and silver bullion in 1799. As Lloyd's had insured this valuable freight (worth over £1 million) and paid the claim in full, the business got to keep the bell.

Following a perusal of The Room, visitors were whisked up to the eleventh floor in one of the exterior glass lifts; the first of their kind in Britain. As we shot upwards, a child standing by the window promptly declared 'I don't like it. I'm scared', and I have to say I agreed: once we stepped out of the lift, the glass-sided walkway linking the lifts to the main building may have afforded impressive views over the City, but it made my head spin and my legs wobble. Fotunately a head for heights wasn't quite so necessary inside 'Gallery 11', unless visitors chose to peer over the balustrade and down the central atrium for a view of The Room. On this level, the style of the building changed abruptly at the doorway to the Adam Room, an eighteenth century dining room designed by Robert Adam for the Earl of Shelbourne. The stucco-clad, chandelier-illuminated room was bought whole at auction by Lloyd's in 1958, later moving to the new building. Also providing a sense of history in Gallery 11 is the collection of Terrence Cuneo paintings which depict different scenes from the two previous Lloyd's buildings.

As the glass lift swept downwards, I momentarily forgot my fear of heights at the sight of the view before us: Tower Bridge, the London Eye and St Paul's were all visible on London's skyline. I began to see the point of Rogers' design technique: a lift with a view like this is surely superior to an enclosed box where the only sights to behold are your fellow lift passengers. Can't say I'd like to be in one if it broke down though.

Exiting the building, I wandered through Victorian Leadenhall Market, unfortunately under scaffolding for restoration works, but open to the public during Open House, with live music and food and drink stalls on site this weekend. Unfortunately, I had run out of time to see more venues, but tomorrow morning I'll be setting the alarm clock and getting back out there to see some more of what Open House has to offer.

Leadenhall Market (minus scaffolding)

• Open House is taking place in London on 18 and 19 September. Details of buildings open to the public can be found here.

A portrait of the City of London

My former impression of guided tours as flocks of badly-dressed tourists being herded round a city's top sights by a frantic umbrella-waver was revised somewhat following a centenary tour of Madrid's Gran Via. With just twelve participants and focused on a specific theme, this tour was more manageable and informative - and, surprisngly, fun. Keen to get a better insight into London after moving, it was with interest I read about Context Travel's 'walking tours for the intellectually curious'. Intellectually curious? Well, I definitely like more from a guided visit than a vague overview and a little bit of pointing at significant statues, so I suppose that puts me in the right category.

Operating in twelve cities worldwide, Context's walking tours are available privately or for groups of no more than 6. Eager to redress my ignorance of my new city's history, I opted for the group version of their historical Portrait of a City walk, and was impressed to find that I only had to share the knowledgeable and engaging Caroline with 3 others. All Context guides are experts in their subject area, with the aim of making each tour more akin to an ambulatory al-fresco seminar. With a PhD in archaeology, a university lectureship and a keen interest in architecture, Caroline was certainly well-qualified to lead the four of us through the City of London's history. It's an area many people (myself included) merely pass through only to get to work, no doubt unaware of much of its long history and the stories behind the monuments rubbing shoulders with office blocks and bars. Fortunately for us, the City's commercial leaning means it's deserted at the weekend: ideal for getting to grips with 2000 years of history on a Sunday morning.

Tower of London

Beginning at the Tower of London (the south-east corner of the Roman city, as I now know), Caroline gave us an overview of the three hours ahead of us and the development of the borough known as the City of London from Roman times to Boris Johnson's times. Fighting our way through the stream of cyclists out in force for Boris's Sky Ride, we made our way to the longest-functioning church in the City, All Hallows by the Tower, where Anglo-Saxon archways remain among the post-Blitz reconstruction. The real treasure is in the crypt however: no, no crusty kings decaying in the shadows post-Tower execution, but a well-preserved section of floor from a second-century Roman home, unearthed during twentieth century rebuilding. Also hiding in the downstairs gloom is a mini-museum, featuring a model of the Roman city. Talking us through its boundaries, Caroline explained that London's north-south divide was more than just a physical one even in Roman times: Southwark was outside the city walls, seen as a potentially seditious area full of untoward goings-on. Along with plenty of playhouses, this naughty neighbourhood also featured a market approximately where Borough Market stands today.

Moving on towards the financial heart of the borough, we detoured into a hotel's courtyard to peruse the remains of the old city walls. With a very straight Roman base and more haphazard medieval top section, this almost hidden stretch of wall is now home to a number of contented-looking pigeons roosting in old look-out points. As we passed down amusingly-named streets such as Crutched Friars (and later Poultry, my personal favourite), our guide explained that the modern street names relate to the former trades which went on there, with Vine Street the site of former vineyards and Crutched Friars once home to the Church of the Holy Cross.

The Gherkin

From Roman ruins we were whisked forward to modern times with a close-up view of that recent entry onto London's skyline, the now-iconic Gherkin (or the less catchy 30 St Mary Axe, as it's officially known). Designed by Norman Foster and completed in 2003, the eco-friendly building is an example of computational architecture (for the non-architecturally savvy like myself, this means that its shape is such that architects couldn't physically draw it, but planned it using special software). There was great opposition to its construction, and you can understand why given the way it towers above its architecturally rather different neighbours, but I was won over by its smooth shape. Less aesthetically pleasing was the Richard Rogers-designed Lloyd's building around the corner, one of the architect's typical 'bowels of the building on the exterior' creations, topped with blue-painted cranes to give an image of permanent construction. Whether it's to your personal taste or not, the 1986 edifice was undeniably a bold statement for the British institution that is Lloyd's.

Lloyd's Building

Bank of England

Caroline whisked us back into the past for an exploration of the Victorian Leadenhall market (unfortunately undergoing refurbishment works) and on to Monument, Christopher Wren's austere memorial to the Great Fire of London in 1666. The fire wreaked havoc in the City, destroying four-fifths of it. Wren was tasked with much of the reconstruction work after the fire's devastation, rebuilding a total of 51 churches including St Paul's Cathedral. From the official we moved back to the seditious: Caroline explained that the City was traditionally an area touched little by kingly influence, but the explosion of coffee houses in the late seventeenth century as an alternative to pubs riled those royals as they felt threatened by activities that took place there. No, not the serving of skinny lattes as opposed to mugs of ale, but discussion of deals among rich tradesmen and early-modern political debate. As a result, the moanrchy made their presence felt in the City through the construction of the Bank of England - no doubt to great effect, as the imposing facade of the huge building can't exactly be ignored. Nor can the nearby Mansion House, the vast Georgian townhouse which serves as the Mayor's residence and office space.

Guildhall

After a final stroll past Guildhall, the palatial seat of the government of the City of London corporation, under whose courtyard lies a recently-revealed Roman amphitheatre, it was time to make our way through Cheapside to Wren's triumph, St Paul's Cathedral, the final stop on the tour. Thanks to Caroline's informative but accessible style, the walk had passed quickly, but left us all feeling that we'd learned far more than on an average guided tour. After uncovering the City's history and getting up close to its many monuments, it's now much more than just a business district to me.

St Paul's Cathedral

• You can find out more about Context's 17 different London walks, which range from history to family-orientated tours, here.