Day 132: Unilever House and Blackfriars Bridge

Blackfriars Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Railway Bridge, carrying the A201 road. The north end is near the Inns of Court and Temple Church, along with Blackfriars station. The south end is near the Tate Modern art gallery and the Oxo Tower.

The present bridge was completed in 1869 and consists of five wrought iron arches built to a design by Joseph Cubitt.

Due to the volume of traffic over the bridge, it was widened between 1907 to 1910, from 70 feet (21 m) to its present 105 feet (32 m).

The bridge became internationally notorious in 1982, when the Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged below one of its arches in what was originally believed to be a suicide, but is now officially regarded as a murder.

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfriars_Bridge

 

Day 102: Blackfriars Bridge

 

The City of London at Twilight (February 2006)

(Archive image from February 2006; each image was taken within 20 minutes of the other one).

In the medieval period the City was the full extent of London (as distinct from the nearby but then-separate City of Westminster), but the term London now refers to a much larger conurbation containing both ‘cities’. The City of London is still part of London’s city centre, but apart from financial services, most of London’s metropolitan functions are centred on the West End. The City of London has a resident population of under 9,000 but a daily working population of around 300,000.

[...]

The size of the City was originally constrained by a defensive perimeter wall, known as ‘London Wall’, which was built by the Romans to protect their strategic port city. However, the boundaries of the City of London are no longer the old City Wall as the city expanded its jurisdiction to the so-called City Bars such as Temple Bar. The boundary froze in the medieval period, thus the City did not and does not control the whole of London.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_london

The same view 20 minutes earlier: