Imperial London Tour

Imperial

LONDON

During the XVIII century, London went from being another European capital to become the biggest city on the planet, and the epicenter of the largest empire the world has ever seen; all financed by Opium but “cleaned” through cultural institutions that have the best war-trophies collection you will ever see and for free — so get your military outfit ready to travel back to the Victorian era.

Time period: 1800-1900

Movie/book: Sherlock Holmes (2009)/David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Soundtrack: Arthur Sullivan/Edward Elgar’s music

Fashion: military colors outfit, tartan scarf plus a bowler hat

Budget:

Edward Mugg: London in Miniature, with the Surrounding Villages Entire New Plan; London 1806

G.W. Bacon: New Map of London; London 1890

This walking tour would take you through the Westend: the neighborhood where theaters, museums, and shops opened up during the Victorian Era; evolving into the entertainment/shopping district of the industrial London where the rich and poor rubbed elbow to elbow right next to the new royal residence of Buckingham Palace. The area is characterized by: Neoclassical architecture, shopping streets and gentrified redbrick houses. The first Industrial Revolution from 1760-1840 turned human and animal labor into machinery; and the raw materials from the distant colonies into mass-produce goods, which were latter transported to other places in boats or trains powered by coal or steam through new roads, canals or railways. Alexandra Victoria of Kent was able to enjoy the prosperity of the industrial days when she became queen of the United Kingdom in 1837 after her uncles George IV and William IV mysteriously died. She reigned over the UK for 63 years and under her (and the Rothschilds) the colonial Asian trading ports grew to become the British Empire: the largest empire in history “where the sun never set” (and the first narco state). The Jewish banker David Sassoon brought Opium from the Middle East to India in 1832, and he started smuggling it to china illegally through the merchant William Jardine (the Pablo Escobar of the day) along other American industrialist. The Opium Wars (from 1839–1842 and 1856–1860) force China to legalize the drug and open more ports (like Hong Kong), making the empire rich — and the money got cleaned through infrastructure and cultural institutions. Factories opened up around Regent’s Canal; Buckingham Palace got remodeled in the 1820s, Covent Garden Market got inaugurated in 1830, the National Gallery opened its doors in Trafalgar Square in 1838, the suburbs of Belgravia, Kensington and Chelsea got developed from 1820-1870; The British Museum expanded to its current neoclassical building in 1846, the London Underground opened in 1863, and Shaftesbury Ave got built with its theaters during the 1870s-80s — London was now the biggest city in the world. The first metropolis with factories, suburbs, cultural institutions and public services like: police, mail, firefighters and telephones boxes. All this modernity brought a lot of prosperity but also a lot of filth and inequality, which made some very rich but half of world very poor. This was also the time when British/French nepo babies started venturing into the decaying Ottoman Empire looking for ancient mysteries while the rest of colonies got sacked “bringing” a lot of artifacts to study them — giving birth to archeology and paleontology as we know it. The empire saw its peak in the 1920s but sadly London wasn't the biggest metropolis anymore, New York City took over in 1925 and the old industrial city got destroyed during WWII — but as always London will reemerge from the ashes again. The tour suggest visiting 2 royal palaces in the morning, lunch plus 3 imperial museums in the afternoon-evening; and dinner plus a walking tour through Covent Garden and maybe a play around Shaftesbury at night.