Neighbourhoods

London is often described as a collection of distinct urban villages rather than a single sprawling metropolis, due to the way it developed over time. Discover each neighbourhood's unique character and charm.

Southwark & Bankside

The Elizabethan pleasure ground: theatres, a rebuilt Globe, a power station full of art, and the bridge to St Paul's.

Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside: a round theatre of white walls and black timbers under a thatched roof — The Globe, back on Bankside in oak and thatch.

Tate Modern from across the Thames: the long brick power station and its single chimney — Tate Modern, in Giles Gilbert Scott's power station. Photo by Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Southwark rooftops from above, Neo Bankside's braced blocks in front and the Shard behind — Bankside from above, the Shard beyond.

A curving street of yellow brick warehouses with iron-framed windows, converted to flats — Warehouse streets behind the river, now flats and offices.

The front of Kirkaldy's Testing Works on Southwark Street, seen from the pavement: four storeys of yellow London brick with arched windows, the words Kirkaldy's Testing & Experimenting Works cut into a stone band across the second floor, white loading doors and an iron hoist on the right, under a blue sky with white clouds. — Kirkaldy's Testing Works on Southwark Street, where David Kirkaldy broke things to see how strong they were.

Bankside was outside the City's control, which is the whole explanation. Anything London would not permit within its walls happened on this strip of the south bank instead: bear-baiting, brothels licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, whose prison gave English the word clink, and above all theatres. The Rose opened in 1587, the Globe in 1599, and Shakespeare's company worked in both. When the Puritans closed the playhouses the ground went to industry, and by the twentieth century the riverside was warehouses and a power station. Both have been turned to other uses. Giles Gilbert Scott's Bankside power station, which stopped generating in 1981, reopened in 2000 as Tate Modern, with the turbine hall left as a room the size of a cathedral. The Millennium Bridge lands in front of it and points at St Paul's. The Globe came back too, in oak and thatch, a few hundred yards from where the first one stood, and plays there in daylight to a standing crowd, as it did in 1599. Behind the river the streets are Victorian warehouses converted to flats and offices, with Southwark Cathedral, a church since at least the twelfth century, among them, and the Anchor and the George keeping the drinking end of the tradition going. The riverside walk between Blackfriars and London Bridge is the best mile of the Thames Path.