London

London is the capital city of the United Kingdom. It sits in southern England along the River Thames, about 50 miles from the sea. Around 9 million people live in the city itself. Millions more live in the towns around it. London is one of the oldest and most important cities in Europe.

The Romans founded London almost 2,000 years ago. They called it Londinium. They built walls, roads, and a bridge across the Thames. After the Romans left, the city was attacked and rebuilt many times. Vikings raided it. English kings ruled from it. By the Middle Ages, London was a crowded town of narrow streets and wooden houses.

In 1666, a fire broke out in a bakery on Pudding Lane. Over four days, the Great Fire of London burned down more than 13,000 houses and old St. Paul's Cathedral. Almost everyone survived, but most of the medieval city was gone. A famous architect named Christopher Wren helped design the new St. Paul's. It still stands today, with a dome you can see for miles.

London became the center of the British Empire in the 1800s. At its peak, the empire ruled about a quarter of the world's land and people. Goods, money, and ideas flowed into London from every continent. The city grew fast. It built the first underground train system in the world, called the Tube, which opened in 1863.

London was bombed heavily during World War II. German planes attacked the city for months in 1940 and 1941, in a campaign called the Blitz. More than 20,000 Londoners were killed, and whole neighborhoods were flattened. The city was rebuilt after the war and became home to people from all over the world. Today more than 300 languages are spoken in London, more than in almost any other city.

Some famous sights bring visitors from everywhere. The Tower of London is a stone fortress almost 1,000 years old. It once held prisoners and now holds the Crown Jewels. Big Ben is the nickname for the giant bell inside the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. Buckingham Palace is where the British king or queen lives. Tower Bridge, with its two tall blue towers, splits open to let tall ships pass.

London is also a world capital of theater, music, and writing. William Shakespeare wrote and performed his plays here in the late 1500s. You can still see plays in a rebuilt version of his theater, the Globe. For a city shaped by fire, war, and empire, London keeps reinventing itself.