The Walls of London walking tour with Open City Friends - Saturday 19th November 2022 10am

This event is for Friends of Open City only (one ticket per Friend). If you'd like to attend, please become a Friend of Open City donating either £10 or £25 a month.

Open City Friends will be exploring how London’s ancient walls have shaped our city for centuries.

The walk will start in the new Roman London Wall Museum at Vine Street. This is due to open to the public some time next year. The new museum which is run by Museum of London is set within King’s College student accommodation Urbanest City.

At its heart lies a public exhibition space housing a preserved section of the original Roman London City Wall. Above the Roman Wall, the building provides student housing, office space, incubator office space for start-up companies and a café to complement the exhibition.

This year Urbanest City was awarded City Building of the Year by The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects. The judging panel praised the project, commenting upon the unique, high-quality design and exceptional precision in its delivery. They also referred to the nature in which the mix of uses have been seamlessly knitted together with a large section of London’s Roman City Wall restored and displayed as a centrepiece. Architects: Hopkins Architects and Apt.

This insightful walking tour along the route of the ruined London Wall — led by City of London guide Paul Lincoln — chronicles how the protective stone barrier, which was originally built by the Romans, has been adapted, demolished, covered up, revealed by the blitz, and even rediscovered by recent building works.

The impact of London’s wall on the historic City of London and the wider capital is immense and yet it is rarely celebrated, noticed or understood. The recent building of the London Wall Place office development by Make — featuring a series of new skywalks — has however shone a light on some new aspects of these ancient fortifications.

Participants will discover the extraordinary history of the wall, its constantly changing appearance, its impact on surrounding neighbourhoods, its relationship with nearby buildings old and new, and the role it played as a symbol of division in medieval society — deterring physical threats, but also separating members of society into ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders.’

London Wall has survived the plague, the Blitz and is likely to survive the social and economic upheavals brought by Covid-19. The tour will use the history, and surviving structure of London’s ancient wall, to open up discussions about how public spaces are used by local residents, visitors and workers and the ways in which the Square Mile responded to the impact of Covid-19

Key information

Meet: Roman London Wall at Vine Street, 35 Vine Street, EC3N 2PX (part of the Urbanest King’s College London student accommodation)

Nearest underground station is Tower Hill and overground Fenchurch Street.

Special Preview Access: Access to the museum from 9-30am
Walk starts at 10-00am

Duration: 2.5 hours approx

Tour end: Ludgate Hill

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This tour is for Open City Friends donating £10 or £25 a month only. It has been designed to thank those who's generous donations support Open City's charitable work. If you'd like to our attend this tour and more across our 2022 Friends Events Programme, then please consider Becoming a Friend of Open City here.

Paul Lincoln is Commissioning Editor of Landscape, the journal of the Landscape Institute. He has been a City of London Guide since 2007 and lives in the City on Golden Lane Estate and has a particular interest in 20th and 21st Century architecture and landscape. Paul has been guiding tours with Open House since 2016.

This tour is part of a project by Paul Lincoln supported by Culture Mile bringing together a long standing interest in talking about the City of London as well as printmaking and animation. You can find out more a londonwalledcity.com