London is the world's leading tourism destination, and the city is home to an array of famous touris

London is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two illennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who called it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile medieval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London midtown madness 2 downloads administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, midtown madness 2 downloads fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the orld's largest financial centre alongside New York City and Tokyo and has the largest city GDP in Europe, and the fifth in the world. It has the most international visitors of any city in the world and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
London has a diverse range of peoples, cultures and religions and more than 300 languages are spoken within its boundaries. In July 2010 Greater London had an official population of 7,825,200, making it the most populous municipality in the European Union. The Greater London Urban Area is the second-largest in the EU with a population of 8,278,251, while London's metropolitan area is the largest in the EU with an estimated midtown madness 2 downloads total population of between 12 million and 14 million. London had the largest population of any city in the world from around 1831 to 1925.
London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; Kew Gardens; the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, midtown madness 2 downloads Westminster Abbey, and St Margaret's Church; and the historic settlement of Greenwich (in which the Royal Observatory marks the Prime Meridian (0 longitude) midtown madness 2 downloads and GMT). Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, 30 St Mary Axe ("The Gherkin"), St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and Wembley Stadium. London is home to numerous museums, galleries, libraries, sporting events and other cultural midtown madness 2 downloads institutions, including the British Museum, National Gallery, British Library, Wimbledon and 40 theatres. London's Chinatown is the largest in Europe. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world and the second-most extensive (after the Shanghai Metro).
London midtown madness 2 downloads is the largest urban area and capital city of the United Kingdom. Greater London covered an area of 1,579 square kilometres (610 sq mi), an area which had a population of 7,172,036 in 2001 and a population density of 4,542 people per square kilometre. A larger area, referred to as the London Metropolitan Region or the London Metropolitan Agglomeration covered an area of 8,382 square kilometres (3,236 midtown madness 2 downloads sq mi) had a population of 12,653,500 and a population density of 1,510 people per square kilometre. London is a port on the Thames (see main article Port of London), a navigable river. The river has had a major influence on the development of the city. London began on the Thames' north bank and for a long time the main focus of the city remained on the north side of the Thames. For many centuries London Bridge was the only bridge in or close to the city. When more bridges were built in the 18th century, the city expanded in all directions as the mostly flat or gently rolling countryside presented no obstacle to growth.
The Culture of London concerns the arts, music, museums, festivals midtown madness 2 downloads and other entertainment in London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. The city is particularly renowned for its theatre quarter, and its West End theatre district has given the name to "West End theatre", the strand of mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in London. London is also home to notable cultural attractions such as the British Museum, midtown madness 2 downloads the Tate Galleries, the National Gallery, the Notting Hill Carnival and The O2.
A variety of landmarks and objects are cultural icons associated with London, such as Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the tube map. Many other British cultural icons are strongly associated with London in the minds of visiting tourists, including the red telephone box, the routemaster bus, the black taxi and the Union Flag.
London is the world's leading tourism midtown madness 2 downloads destination, and the city is home to an array of famous tourist attractions. London attracts 20 million international midtown madness 2 downloads visitors per year, making midtown madness 2 downloads it the world's most visited in terms of international visits. The Tourist Board for London is called Visit London. The Britain and London Visitor Centre is located on Lower Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus.
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.
The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based 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 was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887. Some objects in the collection, most notably the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, are the objects of intense controversy and of calls for restitution to their countries of origin.
Until 1997, when the British Library (previously centred on the Round Reading Room) moved to a new site, the British Museum was unique in that it housed both a national museum of antiquities and a national library in the same building. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all other national museums midtown madness 2 downloads in the United midtown madness 2 downloads Kingdom it charges no admission fee. Since 2002 the director of the museum has been Neil MacGregor.
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the main collection midtown madness 2 downloads (though not some special exhibitions) is free of charge.
Unlike comparable art museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British midtown madness 2 downloads government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius midtown madness 2 downloads Angerstein, an insurance broker and patron of the arts, in 1824. After that initial midtown madness 2 downloads purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two thirds of the collection. midtown madness 2 downloads The resulting collection is small in size, compared with many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne" are represented with important works. It used to be claimed midtown madness 2 downloads that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, but this is no longer the case.
The present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 8. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins's building was often criticised for its perceived aesthetic deficiencies and lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. The current Director of the National Gallery is Nicholas Penny.
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group (together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives and Tate Online). It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of Central London.
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England (the others are the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum). Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road. The museum is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public midtown madness 2 downloads body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 70 million items within midtown madness 2 downloads five main collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. The museum is a world-renowned centre of research, specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Darwin. The Natural History Museum Library contains extensive books, journals, manuscripts, and artwork collections linked to the work and