London History, Up Close

Herbert Mason’s famous photo of St Paul’s in the Blitz. The south face of St Paul’s Cathedral looks out over St Paul’s Churchyard, the pedestrianised square that wraps around the building’s base. Christopher Wren’s dome rises above it. Look up at the triangular pediment on this side of the building and you’ll find a carved phoenix, wings spread, rising from flames. Beneath it, a single Latin word: Resurgam. I shall rise again. It...

St Paul’s Cathedral has a fire-filled history. Ludgate Hill rises gently from the heart of the City of London towards the west facade of St Paul’s Cathedral, the steps spilling down from the portico onto the churchyard below. The stone is worn smooth in places. Tourists cluster around the base of the steps. Office workers cut through on their lunch breaks. It looks, on most days, like a building that has always been here and always will be. That impression is not entirely wrong....

Clouds gather over St Paul’s Cathedral. The west towers of St Paul’s Cathedral rise above St Paul’s Churchyard like a pair of sentinels, topped with gilded pineapples that catch the light on a clear day. They are, even by the standards of a city that has never been shy about reaching skyward, extraordinarily tall. And in the eighteenth century, extraordinarily tall meant extraordinarily vulnerable, especially to the one force of nature that no architect, however...

The steps of St Paul’s Cathedral spill down from a portico of paired columns onto St Paul’s Churchyard, the pedestrianised square that wraps around the building’s south side. Christopher Wren’s stunning dome looms above – the one that survived the Blitz, which you can see from half of London on a clear day. Tourists gather here in clusters. Office workers cut through on their lunch breaks. On most days, this part of the City of London is busy but...