Explore Westminster and Whitehall about Westminster Abbey
Mon-Fri 9.30am-4.45pm, Sat 9.30am-2.45pm, also Wed 6-7.45pm; £5; www.westminster-abbey.org; Tube: Westminster.
The Houses of Parliament dwarf their much older neighbour, Westminster Abbey , yet this single building embodies much of the history of England: it has been the venue for all but two coronations since the time of William the Conqueror, and the site of more or less every royal burial for some five hundred years between the reigns of Henry III and George II. Scores of the nation's most famous citizens are honoured here, too (though many of the stones commemorate people buried elsewhere), and the interior is cluttered with hundreds of monuments, reliefs and statues.
Entry is currently via the north transept, cluttered with monuments to politicians and traditionally known as Statesmen's Aisle , shortly after which you come to the abbey's most dazzling architectural set-piece, the Lady Chapel , added by Henry VII in 1503 as his future resting place. With its intricately carved vaulting and fan-shaped gilded pendants, the chapel represents the final spectacular gasp of the English Perpendicular style. Unfortunately, the public are no longer admitted to the Shrine of Edward the Confessor , the sacred heart of the building, though you do get to inspect Edward I's Coronation Chair , a decrepit oak throne dating from around 1300 and still used for coronations.
Nowadays, the abbey's royal tombs are upstaged by Poets' Corner , in the south transept, though the first occupant, Geoffrey Chaucer, was in fact buried here not because he was a poet, but because he lived nearby. By the eighteenth century this zone had become an artistic pantheon, and since then the transept has been filled with tributes to all shades of talent. From the south transept, you can view the central sanctuary, site of the coronations, and the wonderful Cosmati floor mosaic , constructed in the thirteenth century by Italian craftsmen, and often covered by a carpet to protect it.
Doors in the south choir aisle lead to the Great Cloisters (daily 8am-6pm), rebuilt after a fire in 1298 and now home to a café. At the eastern end of the cloisters lies the octagonal Chapter House (daily: April-Oct 10am-5.30pm or dusk; Nov-March 10am-4pm; £2.50 or £1 with an abbey ticket), where the House of Commons met from 1257. The thirteenth-century decorative paving-tiles and wall-paintings have survived intact. Chapter House tickets include entry to some of the few surviving Norman sections of the abbey: the neighbouring Pyx Chamber (daily 10.30am-4pm), which displays the abbey's plate, and the Undercroft Museum (daily 10.30am-4pm), filled with generations of bald royal death masks and wax effigies.
It's only after exploring the cloisters that you get to see the nave itself: narrow, light and, at over a hundred feet in height, by far the tallest in the country. The most famous monument is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier , by the west door, which now serves as the main exit.
