CITY OF LONDON

The City of London is a small area in Greater London, England. The modern conurbation of London developed from the City of London and the nearby City of Westminster, which was the centre of the royal government. The City of London is now Europe's largest ‘central business district’ (CBD) and financial district. It is often referred to as just the City or as the Square Mile, as it is approximately one square mile (2.6 km²) in area. In the medieval period the City was the full extent of London, but the term London now refers to a much larger conurbation containing both 'cities'. The City of London is still part of London's city centre, but apart from financial services, most of London's metropolitan functions are centred on the West End. The City of London has a resident population of under 10,000 but a daily working population of 311,000.

Its Latin motto is ‘Domine dirige nos’ which means ’Lord, guide us’.

The size of the City was originally constrained by a defensive perimeter wall, known as 'London Wall’, which was built by the Romans to protect their strategic port city. However, the boundaries of the City of London are no longer the old City Wall. The boundary froze in the medieval period, thus the City did not and does not control the whole of London.

The City of London is England's smallest ceremonial county by both population and area covered and is the second smallest British city in both population and size, after St David's in Wales.

The City of London has a unique political status, a legacy of its uninterrupted integrity as a corporate city since the Anglo Saxon period and its singular relationship with the crown. Historically its system of government was not unusual, but it was not reformed by the Municipal Reform Act 1835.

It is administered by the City of London Corporation, headed by the Lord Mayor of London. The City is a ceremonial county too, although instead of having its own Lord-Lieutenant, the City of London has a Commission, headed by the Lord Mayor, exercising this function.

The City has a unique electoral system, which follows very few of the usual forms and standards of democracy. Most of its voters are representatives of businesses and other bodies which occupy premises in the City. Its ancient wards also have very unequal numbers of voters. The City has its own independent police force, the City of London Police. The rest of Greater London is policed by the Metropolitan Police Service, based at New Scotland Yard.

The City is a major patron of the arts. It oversees the Barbican Centre and subsidizes several important performing arts companies. It also takes an interest in open spaces outside its boundaries.

PALACE OF WESTMINSTER

The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, in London, England is where the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (the House of Lords and the House of Commons) meet to conduct their business. The Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the London borough of the City of Westminster, close by other government buildings in Whitehall.

The oldest part of the Palace still in existence, Westminster Hall, dates from 1097. The palace originally served as a royal residence but no monarch has lived in it

since the 16th century. Most of the present structure dates from the 19th century, when the Palace was rebuilt after it was almost entirely destroyed by a fire in 1834. The architect responsible for rebuilding the Palace was Sir Charles Barry with Augustus Welby Pugin. The building is an example of Gothic revival. One of the Palace's most famous features is the clock tower, a tourist attraction that houses the famous bell Big Ben.

The Palace contains over 1,000 rooms, the most important of which are the Chambers of the House of Lords and of the House of Commons. The Palace also includes committee rooms, libraries, lobbies, dining-rooms, bars and gymnasiums. It is the site of important state ceremonies, most notably is the State Opening of Parliament. The Palace is very closely associated with the two Houses, as shown by the use of the word ‘Westminster’ to refer to ‘Parliament’. The Palace of Westminster was strategically important during the Middle Ages, as it was located on the banks of the River Thames. Buildings have occupied the site since at least Saxon times. The Palace of Westminster was the monarch's principal residence in the late Medieval period. The predecessor of Parliament, the Curia Regis (Royal Council), met in Westminster Hall. The Model Parliament, the first official Parliament of England, met in the Palace in 1295. Since then, almost all Parliaments have met in the Palace. However, some Parliaments have met in other locations.

The Palace of Westminster includes approximately 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases, and 3 miles (5 km) of passageways. The building includes four floors; the ground floor includes offices, dining rooms, and bars. The 'first floor' (known as the principal floor) houses the main rooms of the Palace, including the Chambers, the lobbies, and the libraries. The Robing Room, the Royal Gallery, the Prince's Chamber, the Lords' Chamber, the Peers' Lobby, the Central Lobby, the Members' Lobby, and the Commons' Chamber all lie in a straight line on this floor.

The top two floors are used for committee rooms and offices.

The exterior of the Palace of Westminster — especially the Clock Tower — is one of the most visited tourist attractions in London. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) classifies the Palace of Westminster along with neighbouring Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's as a World Heritage Site. It is also a Grade I listed building.

CLOCK TOWER, PALACE OF WESTMINSTER

The Clock Tower is a turret clock structure at the north-eastern end of the Houses of Parliament building in Westminster, London. It is colloquially and popularly known as Big Ben, however this name actually belongs to the clock's main bell. It has also been referred to as St. Stephen's Tower.

The Clock Faces were once large enough to allow the Clock Tower to be the largest four-faced clock in the world, but has since been outdone by the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The builders of the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower did not add chimes to the clock, so Big Ben still holds the title of the ‘World's largest four-faced chiming clock’. The clock mechanism itself was completed by 1854, but the tower was not fully constructed until four years later in 1858.

Big Ben, officially known as the Great Bell of Westminster, is the largest bell in the tower and part of the Great Clock of Westminster. The Great Bell weighs 13 metric tonnes and is 2.2 metres high.

The exact origin of the name 'Big Ben' has remained a popular mystery, leading to speculation that suggests the bell was named after heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt who was popular at the time, however an alternate theory that has been supported cites the origin of the name as belonging to Sir Benjamin Hall who was the Parliamentary Commissioner of Works.

The clock is famous for its reliability. This is due to the skill of its designer, the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison. Denison invented the double three-legged gravity escapement. This escapement provides the best separation between pendulum and clock mechanism. Together with an enclosed, wind-proof box sunk beneath the clockroom, the Great Clock's pendulum is well isolated from external factors like snow, ice and pigeons on the clock hands, and keeps remarkably accurate time.

Big Ben is a focus of New Year celebrations in the United Kingdom, with radio and TV stations tuning to its chimes to welcome the start of the year. Similarly, on Remembrance Day, the chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and the start of two minutes' silence.

TRAFALGAR SQUARE

Trafalgar Square is a square in central London that commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars. The original name was to have been King William the Fourth's Square but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name ‘Trafalgar Square’. The square, a popular site for political demonstrations, is the site of Nelson's Column, and other sculptures.

Nelson's Column is in the centre of the square, surrounded by fountains designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1939 and four huge bronze lions sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer; the metal used is said to have been recycled from the cannon of the French fleet. The column is topped by a statue of Lord Nelson, the admiral who commanded the British Fleet at Trafalgar.

The Square has become an enormously important symbolic social and political location for visitors and Londoners alike, developing over its history from ‘an esplanade peopled with figures of national heroes, into the country’s foremost place politique,’as historian Rodney Mace has written.

The square is a popular tourist spot in London, and used to be particularly famous for its pigeons (Rock Pigeons). Feeding the pigeons was a popular activity with Londoners and tourists. The National Portrait Gallery displays a 1948 photograph of Elizabeth Taylor posing there with bird seed so as to be mobbed by birds.

There has been a Christmas ceremony every year since 1947. A Norway Spruce (or sometimes a fir) is given by Norway's capital Oslo and presented as London's Christmas tree, as a token of gratitude for Britain's support during World War II. As part of the tradition, the Lord Mayor of Westminster visits Oslo in the late autumn to take part in the chopping down of the tree, and the Mayor of Oslo then goes to London to light the tree at the Christmas ceremony.

For many years, revellers celebrating the start of a New Year have gathered on the square, despite a lack of civic celebrations being arranged for them. The lack of official events in the square was partly because the authorities were concerned that actively encouraging more partygoers would cause overcrowding.

BRITISH MUSEUM

The British Museum in London is one of the world's largest and most important museums of human history and culture. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects from all continents, illustrate and document the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. As with all other national museums and art galleries in Britain, the Museum charges no admission fee, although charges are levied for some temporary special exhibitions.

It was established in 1753 and was based largely on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions.

Though principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities today, the British Museum was founded as a ‘universal museum’. This is reflected in the first bequest by Sir Hans Sloane, comprising some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens, prints by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle and Far East and the Americas. The Foundation Act, passed on 7 June 1753, added two other libraries to the Sloane collection. The Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dated back to Elizabethan times and the Harleian library was the collection of the first and second Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four ‘Foundation collections’ include many of the most treasured books in the British Library, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf.

PARLIAMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. It alone has parliamentary sovereignty. At its head is the Sovereign.

The parliament is bicameral, with an upper house, the House of Lords, and a lower house, the House of Commons. The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual (the senior bishops of the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (members of the Peerage); its members are not elected by the population at large. The House of Commons is a democratically elected chamber. The two Houses meet in separate chambers in the Palace of Westminster (commonly known as the ‘Houses of Parliament’), in the City of Westminster in London. By constitutional convention, all government ministers, including the Prime Minister, are members of the House of Commons or House of Lords.

Parliament evolved from the early Medieval councils that advised the sovereigns of England and Scotland. In theory, power is vested not in Parliament, but in the ‘Queen-in-Parliament’ (or ‘King-in-Parliament’). The Queen-in-Parliament is often said to be a completely sovereign authority, though such a position is debatable. In modern