St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's is London's phoenix building. The medieval cathedral burned in the Great Fire of 1666; Christopher Wren — astronomer, anatomist, architect, aged 33 when the city burned — spent the next 45 years building its replacement, and was buried in its crypt under the epitaph his son composed: Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you. For two and a half centuries its dome WAS the skyline, protected even now by sightline laws that bend skyscrapers around it; the wartime photograph of it standing unbowed in the smoke of the Blitz — firewatchers slept on its roofs to keep it so — made it the national symbol it remains.

Inside, the set pieces stack vertically. At floor level: the glittering quire mosaics, Holman Hunt's Light of the World, and Wellington and Nelson state-buried in the crypt (Nelson in a sarcophagus originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey — nothing in England is ever wasted). Then the climb, in three acts: 257 steps to the Whispering Gallery inside the dome, where a murmur against the wall carries audibly to the far side 34 metres away; 119 more to the Stone Gallery outside; and a final 152 up iron spirals threading Wren's double-shell engineering to the Golden Gallery at 85 metres — a narrow balcony at the very top of the dome with the Thames, the Tate, and the City's towers wrapped around you. 528 steps total, and the best earned view in London.

The multimedia guide is included, but the free daily guided tours (led by volunteer guides, book at the desk on arrival) get you into corners the audio doesn't, including the Geometric Staircase from the Harry Potter films. Book the timed ticket online — cheaper than the door — and go at 8:30 opening: the cathedral to yourself for half an hour, the climb before your legs know what's happening, and the Golden Gallery in morning light. Like the Abbey, the working church is free: Evensong (5 PM most days) under Wren's dome, choir echoing in that acoustic, costs nothing and gives much.