When planning a visit to London, every book lover should include in his itinerary the most famous and cited spots of the city.
buzzfeed.com lists 12 places but we will talk about the most well-known.
1.The Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9¾
Located in King’s Cross Station, the fans of the little magician Harry Potter, want miss the opportunity to visit the “Platform 9¾” shop and sign (which marks the secret passageway to the Hogwarts Express, but you knew that). They can’t leave the place without taking a picture with the half luggage trolley as if they where going the the magic train with Harry.
2. Shakespeare’s Globe
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Located at the 21 New Globe Walk, it the icon and symbol of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era.
This is probably the only experience that really requires you to spend some money -£13.50- to be precise. With it you have the admission to the exhibition, which offers Shakespeare’s history and London as he would’ve experienced it, as well as a tour of the theater, which is a faithful reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe. At the end you can of course stop by the souvenir shop and browse through apparel, posters, more novelty feather quill pens, and the plays themselves.
3. The British Library
The British Library is not just the biggest and largest library in the world, but also a world in the world: here will you find rare collections, serene reading rooms, a sprawling piazza, and some truly life-changing upright panels for leaning and reading.
But the biggest attractions are the King’s Library and the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: the first is a six-story glass tower right smack in the middle of the building, containing 65,000 printed volumes, pamphlets, manuscripts, and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820; the latter, a stunning free exhibit showcasing sacred scrolls, historical documents, and original manuscripts — many annotated with the authors’ handwritten notes — including Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Jane Eyre, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Mrs Dalloway, and more. It also has a well-stocked book and gift shop, which is worth a visit.
Located at 221b Baker Street this place is familiar to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fans.
The rarety is far-reaching, starting with the scattered silhouettes at the Baker Street Tube station and continuing up on the street, where you’re met with a ~ mysterious ~ sign of a hand pointing WHO KNOWS WHERE?
The trail continues down Baker Street, and the silhouette can be found on the signs and windows of both the restaurant and bar across the street; the clothing shop next to those displays capes in the window (which could be a coincidence, but still). Even the dry cleaner isn’t just a dry cleaner — it’s the dry cleaner to Sherlock Holmes.
The museum portion, which costs £10, is a re-creation of the home of Sherlock Holmes, as described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The sitting room, bedrooms, study, and laboratory are all set with Victorian-era furnishings, “handwritten” notes and memorabilia about various cases, and life-size figurines. The shop is it’s filled with standard souvenir fare, but you can also find some rare and often silly gems (hats, walking sticks, pipes, handcuffs, books), and all of the employees are in period garb.
5. Charles Dickens Museum
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Located at 48 Doughty Street this is the place for Charles Dickens followers.
The Charles Dickens museum, based out of the house he lived in from 1837–1839, is similar to the Sherlock Holmes Museum in that it’s worth checking out even if you don’t feel like paying for admission. The shop is stocked with such Dickensian delights as plaster and bronze busts, ceramic figurines, stationery sets, embroidered towels, and feather quill pens. There’s also an attached café, which wouldn’t necessarily be noteworthy if it weren’t attached to the museum, but which nonetheless has a pretty killer lemon cake.
The entrance costs £8 (additional £3 for the audio guide, which is super informative but hampers conversation along the way) and the museum is a reconstruction of what Dickens’ home would’ve looked like when he lived there, with period furniture — some, like his custom-made lecturn or writing desk, originally owned by Dickens himself.
Located at Adelaide Street near Trafalgar Square this is the best attraction for Oscar Wilde’s aficionados.
Straight up, this is just a nice granite monument to Oscar Wilde, in a very hectic and tourist-y section of the city, but worth seeking out en route to any of these other spots. (It’s closest to the Charing Cross station.) You can grab a seat on the bench and “converse” with Wilde’s head, perhaps about his famous quote: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
7. The Garden Squares of Bloomsbury
Located in Camden, between Euston Road and Holborn, this is the site for the fans of Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Mary Shelley.
Arianna Rebolini from buzzfeed writes about it:
“Definitely carve out a full few hours (preferably after picking up some books at Charing Cross Road) for exploring the garden squares of Bloomsbury. The idyllic area is most famous for being home and meeting grounds to the great writers, artists, and intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s known as the Bloomsbury group, but it’s had a long history of literary ties. There’s Gordon Square, where you can spy out blue plaques marking the homes of Lytton Strachey (51 Gordon Square), John Maynard Keynes (46 Gordon Square), and Virginia Woolf (50 Gordon Square). You can enjoy the fountain plaza at Russell Square and check out where T.S. Eliot once worked, at Faber & Faber. Swing by 87 Marchmont Street and find the former home of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley (look closely — the plaque is almost hidden above what is now a grocery store). Or you can just claim a spot on the grass at Tavistock Square and read until you fall asleep. You’ll be in good company.”
What do you think about it? Do you want suggest any other? Let us know!