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Imagine commissioning a nearly 12-foot statue of yourself, only for it to end up in your enemy’s house.

Napoleon commissioned Antonio Canova to portray him as Mars the Peacemaker. But when the three-ton statue reached the Musée Napoléon, now the Louvre, he declared that it made him look “too athletic”. It was put into storage and never displayed publicly.

After Waterloo, the British bought the statue and the Prince Regent presented it to the Duke of Wellington in 1816. It was so heavy that the wine cellar beneath it had to be strengthened.

It still stands at the bottom of the staircase inside Wellington’s London home.

📍 Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner

DM this reel to @letsdiscoverapp and we’ll save Apsley House straight to your personal map in the app.

#ThisIsLondon #LondonHistory #ApsleyHouse #Napoleon

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Who put the nail in St Paul’s coffin?

There is a 40-foot nail sticking out of the ground beside St Paul’s Cathedral, and I had walked past it so many times without ever noticing it.

It is called Nail, a 12-metre bronze sculpture created by Gavin Turk in 2011. It has been treated to look rusty and stands at a five-degree angle, so from one position it appears to pin One New Change to the ground.

Turk wanted its meaning to remain open. It can suggest something once held in place and since removed, a nail in a coffin, or the nails of the Crucifixion beside St Paul’s.

From a distance it is unmistakably a nail. Stand underneath it and it becomes an enormous abstract column.

📍 Nail by Gavin Turk, One New Change

Find more places hiding in plain sight on Lets Discover. Link in bio.

#ThisIsLondon #LondonHistory #StPauls #HiddenLondon

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How to get rich in Soho: find all seven noses.

I found six. Admiralty Arch was under scaffolding, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing standing between me and a fortune.

In 1997 the artist Rick Buckley stuck around 35 plaster casts of his own nose on buildings across London, right under the CCTV cameras he was protesting. Here’s where to find them:

📍 Dean Street, outside Quo Vadis (the small one): 30 Dean St, W1D 3RZ
📍 Meard Street: 69-71 Dean St, W1D 3SE
📍 Bateman Street: 3 Bateman St, W1D 4AG
📍 D’Arblay Street: 4 D’Arblay St, W1F 8DJ
📍 Great Windmill Street: 7 Great Windmill St, W1J 9HS
📍 Endell Street: 79 Endell St, WC2H 9DY
📍 Admiralty Arch: The Mall, SW1A 2WH

All seven are pinned on the Lets Discover app, link in bio.

@aton_of_food come and put your London on the map.

Day 3 of 100.

#100daysinlondon #soho #secretlondon #hiddenlondon #londonhistory

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You can ask a black-cab driver for Number One, London without giving a street name or postcode.

He took me straight to Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner. It became known as Number One, London because, after travellers passed the old turnpike tollgate, it was the first house they reached as they entered London from the west.

Its official address is 149 Piccadilly, but cabbies still learn it as Apsley House / Number 1 London as part of the Knowledge.

Try it once. Give the driver only the name and see where you end up.

📍 Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner

Find more places worth leaving the house for on Lets Discover. Link in bio.

#ThisIsLondon #LondonHistory #ApsleyHouse #BlackCab

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Paintings by Turner and Reynolds were among £294 million worth of treasures that went up in flames behind this façade.

The Pantechnicon was one of London’s largest storage warehouses. It was advertised as fireproof, and people trusted it so completely that they reduced their insurance while leaving their valuables inside.

Then, on Friday 13 February 1874, a fire broke out. Within three hours the roof had collapsed. The entire warehouse was destroyed, leaving only the façade standing.

Today, the space behind it has been rebuilt around a courtyard and Halkin Arcade, with Pétrus by Gordon Ramsay just around the corner.

📍 The Pantechnicon, Motcomb Street
📍 Halkin Arcade

Find more places worth leaving the house for on Lets Discover. Link in bio.

#ThisIsLondon #LondonHistory #Belgravia #HiddenLondon

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William Hogarth heard St Barts was planning to bring in a Venetian painter, so he offered to paint the staircase for free.

Petty? Maybe. Effective? Nearly 300 years later, his two enormous paintings are still covering the staircase walls.

Go. The North Wing is free to enter from 10am to 4pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, plus the first Sunday of each month. Then cross the square to see the font where Hogarth was baptised.

📍 @nhsbartshealth, St Bartholomew’s Hospital North Wing
📍 @greatstbarts, St Bartholomew the Great

Find more places worth leaving the house for on Lets Discover. Link in bio.

#ThisIsLondon #LondonHistory #WilliamHogarth #London

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I knew this square from Sherlock. I didn’t know it’s been a hospital since 1123.

Barts got through Henry VIII closing the monasteries. William Wallace was executed just outside the gate. The walls still have scars from wartime bombing.

There’s more that didn’t fit in the video. Hogarth painted the giant murals on the main staircase for free, to prove an English artist could beat the Venetian painter they were thinking of hiring. Upstairs is the Great Hall, and its walls list the people who paid for the hospital centuries before the NHS existed.

Day 20 of 100 showing you this city to get my app Lets Discover to 100,000 users.

#100daysinlondon #buildinpublic #LondonHistory #Sherlock #hiddenlondon

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Almost 100 years before Selfridges and 200 years before Westfield, Londoners shopped here.

This is Royal Opera Arcade. It opened in 1818 and is often described as London’s first shopping arcade. (I picked a great week to visit. It’s under construction.)

A year later came the most famous one, Burlington Arcade. The popular story is that Lord Cavendish built it because people kept throwing oyster shells and rubbish over his garden wall. Nobody has ever really proved that, but it’s a good story.

It wasn’t always as respectable as it looks. By the Victorian era, while shoppers browsed downstairs, some of the rooms above were reportedly being used by prostitutes to meet clients.

Then came Princes Arcade in 1883, followed by Piccadilly Arcade in 1909. Both connect Piccadilly with Jermyn Street, which is still full of shirtmakers and old-school menswear.

I learned a lot of this on a walking tour with @meetmrslondoner, who knows far more about these arcades than I do.

So the shopping centre isn’t new. It just got bigger.

I’ve put all of these arcades together on a map on Lets Discover.

Day 19 of 100 showing you this city to get Lets Discover to 100,000 users.

#100daysinlondon #buildinpublic #LondonHistory #BurlingtonArcade #Piccadilly

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Why does this building get a front garden in Mayfair?

It is Crewe House, a detached mansion built in 1730 by Edward Shepherd. Today it is part of the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

Once I started looking, I realised Piccadilly used to be lined with mansions set back behind courtyards. A few survived, including Cambridge House and Burlington House, now home to the Royal Academy of Arts.

Devonshire House did not. Its gates did, and now stand across the road at the Piccadilly entrance to Green Park.

Look past the shopfronts next time you walk down Piccadilly. The old mansion-lined street is still there in pieces.

Day 18 of 100 showing you this city to get Lets Discover to 100,000 users.

#100daysinlondon #buildinpublic #LondonHistory #Mayfair #piccadilly

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This avenue was supposed to run from the Royal Hospital Chelsea all the way to Kensington Palace.

Christopher Wren approved the plan in 1681. Only the section between the hospital and King’s Road was built.

I extended the line across modern London to see what the missing road would cut through. Chelsea. The V&A and Science Museum. Imperial College. Kensington Gardens. Then, finally, Kensington Palace.

Stand at the King’s Road end and look south. The broad gravel path still gives you the grand view Wren intended.

Would you have built the rest?

Day 17 of 100 showing you this city to get Lets Discover to 100,000 users.

#100daysinlondon #buildinpublic #LondonHistory #Chelsea #RoyalAvenue

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Three street signs. One road. Each one records a different version of London.

London’s postal districts date to 1857. South London briefly had its own “S” district, but it was abolished in 1868 and divided between S.E. and S.W.

During the First World War, numbered subdistricts were introduced to help temporary postal staff sort addresses. That is how this part of London became S.W.1.

The borough name adds another layer. The older sign says “Borough of Chelsea.” The newer one says “The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,” created when the two boroughs merged in 1965.

Next time you are walking around London, look up. The postcode and borough name can give you a pretty good idea of when a street sign went up.

Day 16 of 100 showing you this city to get Lets Discover to 100,000 users.

#100daysinlondon #buildinpublic #LondonHistory #Chelsea #LondonPostcodes

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Not my hometown but I know my way around 🏡💂

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