Secrets & Espionage

Where the state kept its secrets and where the spies were made up: the bugged mansion, the bunkers, the headquarters you can only look at, the memorials to the agents, and the addresses of Bond and Smiley.

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MI6, Vauxhall Cross

The Secret Intelligence Service's headquarters since 1994, Terry Farrell's ziggurat on the river, blown up in three Bond films.

HeadquartersBond & SmileyFree

Photo by Mark Ahsmann, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nobody was supposed to say what the building was when it went up, and then the government named it in Parliament and Bond drove past it in GoldenEye a year later; since then it has been rocketed by the Real IRA in 2000, exploded on screen in Skyfall and Spectre, and become the one intelligence headquarters in the world that is a landmark. Farrell's design, in cream stone and green glass with sixty-odd separate roofs, was meant to recall a Mayan temple and is called Legoland by the people who work in it. Best seen from Vauxhall Bridge; the windows are triple-glazed and none of them opens.

Where
85 Albert Embankment, SE1 7TP
Nearest station
Vauxhall · 2 min walk

Not open; seen from Vauxhall Bridge and the Albert Embankment.

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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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