London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of 9.1 million people in 2024. Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 15.1 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of the national government and parliament. London grew rapidly in the 19th century, becoming the world's largest city at the time. Since the 19th century the name "London" has referred to the metropolis around the City of London, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised the administrative area of Greater London, governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority.
London | |
|---|---|
| Coordinates: 51°30′26″N 0°7′39″W / 51.50722°N 0.12750°W | |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Country | England |
| Region | London |
| Ceremonial counties | |
| Settled by Romans | AD 47, as Londinium |
| Administrative HQ | City Hall, Newham |
| Local government | 32 London boroughs, the City of London and Queen's Park parish |
| Government | |
| • Type | Executive mayoralty and deliberative assembly |
| • Body | Greater London Authority |
| • Mayor | Sadiq Khan (L) |
| • London Assembly | 14 constituencies |
| • UK Parliament | 74 constituencies |
| Area | |
• Total | 607 sq mi (1,572 km2) |
| • Urban | 671 sq mi (1,738 km2) |
| • Metro | 3,236 sq mi (8,382 km2) |
| Population (2024) | |
• Total | 9,089,736 |
| • Rank |
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| • Density | 14,980/sq mi (5,782/km2) |
| • Urban (2011) | 9,787,428 |
| • Metro (2025) | 15,100,000 |
| Demonyms | Londoner |
| Ethnicity (2021) | |
| • Ethnic groups | |
| Religion (2021) | |
| • Religion | List
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| Time zone | UTC+00:00 (GMT) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+01:00 (BST) |
| Postcode areas | |
| Dialling codes |
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| GSS code |
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| GeoTLD | .london |
| Website | london |
As one of the world's major global cities, London exerts a strong influence on world art, entertainment, fashion, commerce, finance, education, healthcare, media, science, technology, tourism, transport and communications. London is Europe's largest city economy and one of the world's major financial centres. London hosts Europe's largest concentration of higher education institutions, comprising over 50 universities and colleges and enrolling more than 500,000 students as at 2023. It is home to several of the world's leading academic institutions: Imperial College London, internationally recognised for its excellence in natural and applied sciences, and University College London (UCL), a comprehensive research-intensive university, consistently rank among the top ten globally. Other notable institutions include King's College London (KCL), highly regarded in law, humanities and health sciences; the London School of Economics (LSE), globally prominent in social sciences and economics; and specialised institutions such as the Royal College of Art (RCA), Royal Academy of Music (RAM), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and London Business School (LBS). It is the most-visited city in Europe and has the world's busiest city airport system. The London Underground is the world's oldest rapid transit system.
London's diverse cultures encompass over 300 languages. The 2025 population of Greater London of just over 9.8 million made it Europe's third-most populous city, accounting for 13.1 per cent of the United Kingdom's population and 15.5 per cent of England's population. The Greater London Built-up Area is the fourth-most populous in Europe, with about 9.8 million inhabitants as of 2011. The London metropolitan area is the third-most-populous in Europe, with about 15 million inhabitants as of 2025, making London a megacity.
Four World Heritage Sites are located in London: Kew Gardens; the Tower of London; the site featuring the Palace of Westminster, the Church of St Margaret, and Westminster Abbey; and the historic settlement in Greenwich where the Royal Observatory defines the prime meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square. The city has the most museums, art galleries, libraries and cultural venues in the UK, including the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, the British Library and numerous West End theatres. Important sporting events held in London include the FA Cup Final, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and the London Marathon. It became the first city to host three Summer Olympic Games upon hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Etymology
London is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD, usually in the Latinised form Londinium. Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms that are found in early sources: Latin (usually Londinium), Old English (usually Lunden), and Welsh (usually Llundein), with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed that the name came into these languages from Common Brythonic; recent work tends to reconstruct the lost Celtic form of the name as *Londonjon or something similar. This was then adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English.
Until 1889, the name "London" applied officially only to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to the County of London and to Greater London.
History
Prehistory
In 1993 remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south River Thames foreshore, upstream from Vauxhall Bridge. Two of the timbers were radiocarbon dated to 1750–1285 BC. In 2010 foundations of a large timber structure, dated to 4800–4500 BC, were found on the Thames' south foreshore downstream from Vauxhall Bridge. Both structures are on the south bank of the Thames, where the now-underground River Effra flows into the Thames.
Roman London
Despite the evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans around AD 47, about 4 years after their invasion of AD 43. This only lasted until about AD 61, when the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed it and burnt it to the ground.
The next planned incarnation of Londinium prospered, superseding Colchester as the principal city of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of about 60,000.
Anglo-Saxon and Viking-period London
With the early-5th-century collapse of Roman rule, the walled city of Londinium was effectively abandoned, although Roman civilisation continued around St Martin-in-the-Fields until about 450. From about 500 an Anglo-Saxon settlement known as Lundenwic developed slightly west of the old Roman city. By about 680 the city had become a major port again, but there is little evidence of large-scale production. From the 820s repeated Viking assaults brought decline. Three are recorded; those in 851 and 886 succeeded, while the last, in 994, was rebuffed.
The Vikings applied Danelaw over much of eastern and northern England, its boundary running roughly from London to Chester as an area of political and geographical control imposed by the Viking incursions formally agreed by the Danish warlord named Guthrum and the West Saxon king Alfred the Great in 886. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Alfred "refounded" London in 886. Archaeological research shows this involved abandonment of Lundenwic and a revival of life and trade within the old Roman walls. London then grew slowly until a dramatic increase in about 950.
By the 11th century London was clearly the largest town in England. Westminster Abbey, rebuilt in Romanesque style by King Edward the Confessor, was one of the grandest churches in Europe. Winchester had been the capital of Anglo-Saxon England, but from this time London became the main forum for foreign traders and the base for defence in time of war. In the view of Frank Stenton: "It had the resources, and it was rapidly developing the dignity and the political self-consciousness appropriate to a national capital."
Middle Ages
After winning the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England as William I in the newly completed Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William built the Tower of London, the first of many such in England rebuilt in stone in the south-eastern corner of the city, to intimidate the inhabitants. In 1097 William II began building Westminster Hall, near the abbey. It became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster.
In the 12th century the institutions of central government, which had hitherto followed the royal English court around the country, grew in size and sophistication and became increasingly fixed, for most purposes at Westminster, although the royal treasury came to rest in the Tower of London. While the City of Westminster developed into a true governmental capital, its distinct neighbour, the City of London, remained England's largest city and principal commercial centre and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. In 1100 its population was some 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. With the Black Death in the mid-14th century, London lost nearly a third of its population. London was the focus of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.
London was a centre of England's Jewish population before their expulsion by Edward I in 1290. Violence against Jews occurred in 1190, when it was rumoured that the new king had ordered their massacre after they had presented themselves at his coronation. In 1264, during the Second Barons' War, Simon de Montfort's rebels killed 500 Jews while attempting to seize records of debts.
Early modern
During the Tudor period the Reformation produced a gradual shift to Protestantism. Much property in London passed from church to private ownership, which accelerated trade and business in the city. In 1475 the Hanseatic League set up a main trading base (kontor) of England in London, called the Stalhof or Steelyard. It remained until 1853, when the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg sold the property to South Eastern Railway. Woollen cloth was shipped undyed and undressed from 14th- and 15th-century London to the nearby shores of the Low Countries.
Yet English maritime enterprise hardly reached beyond the seas of northwestern Europe. The commercial route to the Italian peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea was normally through Antwerp and over the Alps; any ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to or from England were likely to be Italian or Ragusan. The reopening of the Netherlands to English shipping in January 1565 spurred a burst of commercial activity. The Royal Exchange was founded. Mercantilism grew and monopoly traders such as the East India Company were founded as trade expanded to the New World. London became the main North Sea port, with migrants arriving from England and abroad. The population rose from about 50,000 in 1530 to about 225,000 in 1605.
In the 16th century the poet and playwright William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived in London during English Renaissance theatre. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was constructed in 1599 in Southwark. Stage performances came to a halt in London when Puritan authorities shut down the theatres in the 1640s. The ban on theatre was lifted during the Restoration in 1660, and London's oldest operating theatre, Drury Lane, opened in 1663 in what is now the West End theatre district.
By the end of the Tudor period in 1603, London was still compact. There was an assassination attempt on James I in Westminster, in the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605. In 1637 the government of Charles I attempted to reform administration in the London area. This called for the Corporation of the city to extend its jurisdiction and administration over expanding areas around the city. Fearing an attempt by the Crown to diminish the Liberties of London, coupled with a lack of interest in administering these additional areas or concern by city guilds of having to share power, caused the Corporation's "The Great Refusal", a decision which largely continues to account for the unique governmental status of the City of London.
In the English Civil War the majority of Londoners supported the Parliamentary cause. After an initial advance by the Royalists in 1642, culminating in the battles of Brentford and Turnham Green, London was surrounded by a defensive perimeter wall known as the Lines of Communication. The lines were built by up to 20,000 people, and were completed in under two months. The fortifications failed their only test when the New Model Army entered London in 1647, and they were levelled by Parliament the same year. London was plagued by disease in the early-17th century, culminating in the Great Plague of 1665–1666, which killed up to 100,000 people, or a fifth of the population. The Great Fire of London broke out in 1666 in Pudding Lane in the city and quickly swept through the wooden buildings. Rebuilding took over 10 years and was supervised by the polymath Robert Hooke.
In 1710 Christopher Wren's masterpiece St Paul's Cathedral was completed, replacing its medieval predecessor, which burnt down in the Great Fire. The dome of St Paul's dominated the London skyline for centuries, inspiring the artworks and writing of William Blake, with his 1789 poem "Holy Thursday" referring to 'the high dome of Pauls'. During the Georgian era new districts such as Mayfair were formed in the west; new bridges over the Thames encouraged development in South London. In the east the Port of London expanded downstream. London's development as an international financial centre matured for much of the 18th century.
In 1762 George III acquired Buckingham House, which was enlarged over the next 75 years. During the 18th century London was said to be dogged by crime, and the Bow Street Runners were established in 1750 as a professional police force. Epidemics during the 1720s and 30s saw most children born in the city die before reaching their fifth birthday.
Coffeehouses became a popular place to debate ideas, as growing literacy and development of the printing press made news widely available, with Fleet Street becoming the centre of the British press. The invasion of Amsterdam by armies of Napoleon led many financiers to relocate to London and the first London international issue was arranged in 1817. Around the same time, the Royal Navy became the world's leading war fleet, acting as a major deterrent to potential economic adversaries. Following a fire in 1838, the Royal Exchange was redesigned by William Tite and rebuilt in 1844. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was specifically aimed at weakening Dutch economic power. London then overtook Amsterdam as the leading international financial centre.
Late modern and contemporary
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, an unprecedented growth in urbanisation took place, and the number of High Streets (the primary street for retail in Britain) rapidly grew. London was the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925, with a population density of 802 per acre (325 per hectare). In addition to the growing number of stores selling goods, such as Harding, Howell & Co., one of the first department stores, located on Pall Mall, the streets had scores of street sellers. Rising traffic congestion led to the creation of the London Underground, the world's first urban rail network.
London's overcrowded conditions and the "Great Stink" of the River Thames led to cholera epidemics, claiming 14,000 lives in 1848, and 6,000 in 1866. A key development in public health and sanitation took place at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park when George Jennings installed the first public flush toilets. In response to the exacerbation of sanitary conditions brought on by heavy industrialisation and urbanisation, the modern sewage system was created in London by the Metropolitan Board of Works led by its chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette. The London sewer system included 82 miles (132 km) of main and 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of street sewers that diverted waste to the Thames Estuary, and by the 1890s it would also feature the revolutionary biological treatment of sewage to oxidise the waste. The Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion in the capital and some surrounding counties; it was abolished in 1889 when the London County Council was created out of county areas surrounding the capital.
From the early 20th century onwards, teashops were found on High Streets across London and the rest of Britain, with Lyons, who opened the first of their chain of teashops in Piccadilly in 1894, leading the way. Tearooms, such as the Criterion in Piccadilly, became a popular meeting place for women from the suffrage movement. The city was the target of many attacks during the suffragette bombing and arson campaign, between 1912 and 1914, in which historic landmarks such as Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral were bombed.
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