London: The City

A discount-priced flight to London leads me to think about going back for the 4th time. This time, though, I want to visit a less familiar area, going a little beyond the standard tourist sights. Who doesn't know the City? Of course I had been there before, nearby are Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, but this time I want to savour a leisurely day strolling among narrow streets where you can breathe the air of an old London, sheltered by ultra-modern glass-and-steel buildings in which little Victorian-style houses are reflected. One of these, Dennis Severs' House at no. 18 Folgate Street, we go to visit as if we had stepped into a time machine. It feels like spying on the life of an 18th-century family; there is no one in the house but everything suggests that at any moment the owners might walk in.

In this place suspended in time, you observe in silence almost so as not to disturb, but in reality you can hear the sounds of carriages on the street, of the clock in the parlour or of the shouting boys outside the door. Everywhere the smells carry you back to that precise instant in which you have been transported; in the kitchens richly stocked with crockery and pans you can smell the food, while the scent of cinnamon and tea lingers in the master's rooms. On the walls, paintings reproducing everyday scenes of events that also took place inside the house, almost as if to lead the visitor ever deeper into that precise historical moment. It is a journey made through the stimulation of the senses that leads the visitor to imagine and feel part of a world now lost.

Afterwards, walking the streets of the neighbourhood we reach the old Spitalfields Market, which now hosts shops and multi-ethnic street food stalls where you can sit down to eat together with City office workers on their lunch break. Then, walking through the streets of the Whitechapel area, once the city's slums frequented by the sadly famous Jack the Ripper, we arrived at Leadenhall Market. A covered market in Victorian style, used as a set in Harry Potter for Diagon Alley. Continuing our tour we reach the Barbican Centre, the largest centre for performing arts in Europe. We don't see any performance but some installations by young artists and the structure of the centre itself, which is already worth the visit if only because you realise the importance of a place like this in a city, with concert halls, theatres, an auditorium, a cinema, exhibition rooms and who knows what else.

Coming out of here we then head towards Old Street, where we walk a little photographing some street art works before dinner. The next day, while waiting to leave in the afternoon for Cambridge, I dedicate the morning to visiting 221 Baker Street. At last I arrive in the apartment of one of my favourite literary characters: Sherlock Holmes. I wander through his study, I see the pipe, the violin, the magnifying glass and all his chemistry retorts. Everything is recreated exactly as told in the novels and as I had always imagined it. Also Dr Watson's room, his bag and the desk on which, from his pen, his friend's adventures came to life. Let's say that this time in London we made a journey through literature and films, and once we reached King's Cross station, a visit to platform 9 and ¾, from which the train to Hogwarts departs, could not be missed.

We, however, caught a train for Cambridge instead.