London Tourist Guide 🇬🇧 Kew Gardens and Greenwich

The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew is widely recognized as one of the world's leading centers for advice and action on aspects of plant and fungal conservation. Visitors explore glasshouses, landscapes, and 250 years of history at the world's most famous garden. Conservation programs are undertaken on a wide range of endangered and threatened plants As early as the 16th century, the land that is now Kew Gardens began to be developed into what it is today, in large part thanks to royal patronage. Today, Kew's 44 listed historical monuments reflect the stylistic expressions of various periods. They have retained their authenticity in terms of design, materials, and functions. Covering 4,880 square meters, the Temperate House is the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world. With voracious Victorian collectors bringing back ever more species from around the globe, Kew needed somewhere to house its growing collection of semi-hardy and temperate plants. The Temperate House was officially opened, unfinished, in 1863. The south wing and octagon are home to African plants. The main rectangular hall hosts subtropical trees and palms, while the north wing and octagon contain temperate plants from Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and the Pacific. The sun provides a little extra warmth for the heat-loving South African plants at the southern end of the glasshouse. The curving exterior and steamy interior of Kew's Palm House have long made it an icon of the gardens. The Palm House was designed to accommodate the exotic palms being collected and introduced to Europe in early Victorian times. The project was pioneering, as it was the first time engineers had used wrought iron to span such large widths without supporting columns. The result was a vast, light, lofty space that could easily accommodate the crowns of large palms. The Palm House creates conditions similar to tropical rainforests. Around a quarter of the palms planted here are threatened in the wild, as are more than half of the cycads, the living fossils of the tropics. The elegant design of its unobstructed space for the spreading crowns of the tall palms was a perfect marriage of form and function. Existing buildings, lost monuments and follies, gardens and landscapes new and old, botanic collections and Kew's places of work, they are all part of Kew's heritage. An ancient village on the banks of the Thames, steeped in royal history, Greenwich has long been home to a royal charter market. Greenwich Market attracts over two million visitors a year, who come here not just to shop and soak up the sights, sounds and smells of the market, but to explore Maritime Greenwich and enjoy the magnificent views, architecture, history and atmosphere that led UNESCO to award it World Heritage Site status in 1997. The ensemble of buildings of Maritime Greenwich set in and around the oldest royal park in London, and bordered to the north by the River Thames, reads like a who's who of British architecture. Covering 73 hectares, Greenwich Park is the oldest enclosed royal park. It provides a setting for several historic buildings and churches, including the Old Royal Observatory, the Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen's House. Roman's royalty and the Industrial Revolution have all shaped the history of Greenwich. Located 8 miles downstream from the city of London, it dates from Anglo-Saxon times. A World Heritage Site and one of the most famous historic features of Maritime Greenwich, the Old Royal Observatory dominates the landscape from its position on the brow of Greenwich Hill. The observatory is the home of the world's prime meridian longitude. Since the late 19th century, the prime meridian at Greenwich has served as a reference line for Greenwich Mean Time. It can now claim to be the center of world time, as well as the official starting point for the new millennium. Every place on earth is measured in terms of its distance east or west from the Greenwich Meridian. The line itself divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the earth, just as the equator divides the northern and southern hemispheres. The observatory was built in 1675 as a home for John Flamsteed, the first royal astronomer, who lived in the four rooms of the ground floor and worked in the octagon room above until the death of Sir Christopher Wren. Greenwich Park is divided in two by a steep sloped escarpment that runs from east to west. From the Blackheath Gate, the 166 hectares of Regent's Park is amazingly diverse in terms of wildlife. The park's landscape ranges from wide open plain fields and wildflower grassland to more secluded woodland, wetland and reed beds. One very important element to the management of the park is a focus on the conservation and enhancement of its biodiversity. Over the past 20 years, the management of the park has concentrated on meeting the needs of both the public and those of its wildlife. As a result, the park is an important site for wildlife, which also benefits from the stunning floral display, including flower gardens. The Royal Naval College, the great Baroque masterpiece of English architecture, is set in landscaped grounds on the Thames River in the centre of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Sir Christopher Wren planned the site, and during the first half of the 18th century, various illustrious architects completed the design. Soon after this, the Royal Naval College moved in, heralding a new beginning for the site as a naval training centre for officers from around the world. The National Maritime Museum was formally established by Act of Parliament in 1934 and opened to the public by King George VI in 1937. It includes the 17th century Queen's House, and from the 1950s, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The museum has the most important holdings in the world on the history of Britain at sea. The museum is also unique in the architectural importance of its main buildings, being the keystone of the historic park and palace landscape of Maritime Greenwich.