Square Mile city break: How to do London’s oldest district in style
What destinations spring to mind when you imagine a city break. Paris in the spring? The beer halls of Munich? The tourist gauntlets of Rome or Prague? All excellent options, destinations that have stood the test of time. But you know where else has stood the test of time? The Square Mile. When you’re planning your next city break, maybe it should be a City break.
I have worked in the Square Mile for 15 years and over that time it has threatened over and over again to become a truly seven-day operation. There was the opening of One New Change, the various iterations of Royal Exchange, and recently the weekend opening of City institutions One Lombard Street and Coq d’Argent.
So I decided to forgo the train home from Liverpool Street station on Friday evening and instead check into the new Pan Pacific hotel across the road in preparation for a weekend within the City limits.
The Pan Pacific
The Pan Pacific is a real statement of intent for the Square Mile, a proper landmark hotel that rivals any in the capital. The quality is evident from the moment you step into the lobby – everything here feels expensive, assured, calm. It feels slightly surreal to be ensconced in five star comfort while mere feet away from your daily commute; from my plush corner-room on the 11th floor I could spot three past and present City PM offices, which is a niche but satisfying brand of sight seeing. From the infinity pool at the high-spec spa you get a view over Liverpool Street station, which feels strangely comforting. You also get a bird’s eye view of London’s oldest district, giving you a fresh perspective on the warren of alleyways and churches that skulk below the skyscrapers.
The London Spy
For a street-level view, however, you really want to speak to David Harry, AKA The London Spy. Once a Vice President at a global investment bank, he is now one of London’s most highly rated tour guides, with more than 200,000 followers on TikTok. I had the privilege of a one-on-one with this unlikely star of social media, taking a 90-minute stroll around the City.
Have you ever noticed the 12m high nail jutting out of the ground outside One New Change, a Gavin Turk sculpture that may or may not riff on the crucifixion? Have you attempted to decode the pediment sculptures that adorn St Paul’s, which hold not only religious meaning but also reflect the city’s resurgence following the Great Fire of London?
Harry is a first rate raconteur, segueing from in-depth discussions about the Square Mile’s statuary to hilarious anecdotes about its more recent history, such as the unprintable way Nick Leeson (of Barings Bank infamy) used to introduce himself on the phone, or the absolutely wild story of Brendan Bracken, the founder of the modern Financial Times.
Each tour is bespoke, allowing Harry to tailor the content for the interests of his audience; mine ended sitting around the Henry Moore altar at the St Stephen Walbrook church gawping at his collection of original newspaper front pages, some of which date back to the 1660s.
The Barbican
Continuing the walking tour theme, I signed up for a march through the catwalks and tunnels of the Barbican, the brutalist – or is it? – housing estate that’s unlike anywhere else in the world. Conceived as a utopian vision for post-war social living, it now feels more like a functional relic to that ambition, something that’s been all but forgotten in our age of magnolia new builds and planning red tape.
The tour starts with a diversion into the bowels of the estate, where esoteric pipes and boilers snake for kilometres. On walls hidden from public view you can see the early experiments of the developers as they chose the materials for the buildings. The initial plan was to clad the estate in marble, until they realised how much it would cost, and how quickly it would weather. Instead they went for the distinctive mottled concrete, each sheet of which – miles and miles of concrete – was hand-drilled by artisan builders in a process that’s so labour intensive and dangerous that it would be unthinkable (and probably illegal) today.
Like Harry’s walk, the Barbican Architecture tour is a combination of fascinating facts and salacious gossip, with highlights including the rows between neighbours over the iconic Barbican window boxes, and the problems the estate has getting anything done when there are so many lawyers living in the same place.
St Bartholomew the Great
To finish off the historical portion of my City break I walked up to the far northern tip of the Square Mile, where you can find St Bartholomew the Great, a church built when Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, was King of England. Rather than a single contiguous building, this 900 year old structure bears the architectural flourishes from repeated rebuilds and renovations – arches knocked through and rebuilt in different styles; doors leading nowhere – creating a pleasingly higgledy-piggledy effect. You can see the hole where church founder Rahere was dug from his tomb by curious Victorian builders, who then nicked one of his holy sandals; now he haunts the building trying to get it back. You can also lie in the spot where Hugh Grant lands after being punched in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Something for everyone, really.
Close to St Bartholomew the Great is the excellent new restaurant Origin City, a zero waste operation headed up by executive chef Graham Chatham, formerly of Rules and The Langham. Here you’ll find an excellent, meat-heavy menu that rivals anything in the City. Order the exceptional ‘aged black pig’ cutlet with fennel sausage. Back at the Pan Pacific you can finish off the evening by sampling the selection of rare and exotic rums at the Ginger Lily cocktail bar.
Horizon 22
Any cobwebs from the night before will be blown away at the City’s newest tourist attraction: Horizon 22, London’s highest viewing platform, its position so absurdly elevated that you can look down upon the other skyscrapers like a parent looking down at the head of a child. From up here I could see my house in Walthamstow, almost eight miles away. Short of being in a helicopter, there is no better way of seeing the City from above. It’s free – just make sure you book far in advance.
Next I took the five minute walk to the streets of Victorian London, recreated by Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience. I gave this mad show – part immersive theatre, part VR experience – five stars when it opened in May 2019, and while it’s beginning to show its age, it remains a Square Mile oddity unlike anything else. I finished the weekend off with more cocktails, this time on the viewing deck at the Walkie Talkie.
There are dozens of alternative ways this weekend in the Square Mile could have shaken out: more tours to walk, more restaurants in which to dine, more skyscrapers to scale. And the best part? I woke up on Monday morning less than 10 minutes from my office, arriving at my desk without the lead weight of the daily commute upon my shoulders. Blissful.