Monuments & Ruins

Not every statue in London. The ones worth crossing the road for: Roman wall, medieval ruins, and the monuments that earn a detour.

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Barbican bastions

Medieval bastions on the Roman line, standing in the Barbican's ornamental lake.

RomanMedievalRuinsFree

Photo by Doyle of London, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three bastions and the wall between them survive along the south side of the Barbican estate, beside St Giles Cripplegate. The wall is Roman at the base and the bastions are thirteenth-century, hollow-backed towers added when the city was fortified against Simon de Montfort's barons. The estate's architects kept them and ran the water round their feet, so Bastion 12 rises out of a lake among the concrete. No other stretch of the wall is seen like this. The panels along the walkway explain each piece.

Where
St Giles' Terrace, Barbican, EC2Y 8DA
Nearest station
Barbican · 4 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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