The Treasures of London

London does not enjoy a particularly great reputation; not on the evidence of recent years. To those who don’t live there, it is a place of constant social strife and endless rounds of acid attacks and unprovoked stabbings. I know that to many in Britain and Ireland, London is thought of as a den of villainy and vice, a pit of filth, the very belly of the beast. Nevertheless, while it is indeed true to say that some of the inner city postcodes are dangerous places, there is so much more to London than merely the degenerate crimes of its least civilised denizens.

In fact, the central portions of London are much as they always were; tourist-friendly and filled to bursting with interesting things. Though this reality might be difficult to appreciate if you’ve only ever been fed a diet of anti-London propaganda, the capital is filled with treasures. It is dripping with history. It is saturated by history. It is a type of gigantic open museum.

In central London — the City and Westminster — at almost every turn you are confronted by the ghosts of posterity. From first century Roman rule to Mr Hitler’s Blitz, the pavements themselves are almost alive with cultural heritage.

Then there are the official repositories of actual treasures. In South Kensington stands the Natural History Museum; there you will be amazed by the finest collection of marvels from prehistoric times that men have ever assembled under one roof. Almost next door is the Victoria and Albert Museum; here you will find the most eclectic and bewildering array of artefacts, from a full-size plaster cast of Trajan’s Column to Tippoo’s Tiger. In the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square you will be drowned in Old Masters; Titian’s, Vermeer’s, Monet’s, Ruben’s, Rembrandt’s, Van Gogh’s, Caravaggio’s, Turner’s, and on and on. Directly beside that is the National Portrait Gallery, where there is an entirely different and equally incredible collection of paintings: wall to wall masterpieces, everything from Holbein to van Dyke to Goya. Across the road from the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Hall, you will find an abbey, an impossibly venerable royal abbey replete with original medieval stained glass and giant flying buttresses. Inside, be amazed! The bodies of everyone from Saint Edward the Confessor to Henry V to Good Queen Bess herself; scarcely believable. The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, the Tate, St Paul’s. The list goes on. 

Yet all these wonders are, to my mind, mere appetisers; nothing more than an amuse-bouche. The main event, for me, is the British Museum in Bloomsbury. Here is a cathedral to history. Here is literally a treasure-house. Here resides the most spectacular and singular collection of antiquities that any single nation has ever amassed in a single location. 

While there may be other museums in the world that contain individual collections of higher quality — such as the Egyptian collection in Cairo, or the Hittite collection in Istanbul — as a whole, nothing can beat the British Museum.

Among its most impressive pieces are the Rosetta Stone, the Standard of Ur, the Elgin Marbles, the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs, the Pillar of Ashoka, the bronze head of Augustus, the colossal  Ramases statue, the Sutton Hoo treasures, mummies by the dozen, more original Roman busts than you can shake a stick at, and so on. The British Museum — if you are a fan of ancient history — is, quite literally, a dream factory. 

My single favourite object in the entire British Museum is one that didn’t even make ex-director Neil MacGregor’s list of his top 100 objects. It is a Hellenist era golden wreath, a type of crown or diadem. It was found in the Dardanelles region and was almost certainly made between 350 and 300 BC. So, at a pinch, it could have been worn by Philip of Macedon, or possibly even his illustrious son, Alexander. Allow your imagination to run wild. What an object. What a treasure.

The thing itself is a simple band fashioned from sheet gold and made to look like a branch. From this diadem/branch there are golden leaves and acorns and little gilded insects, a bee and cicadas. It is extremely delicate, and considering it dates from three hundred years before Christ, a superb example of ancient craftsmanship. 

It is such a singular artefact that I can think of no other parallel. That it has survived into the modern era is staggering; its provenance is beyond belief. Whenever I visit the British Museum, if that particular gallery is open — not always the case — I will marvel at it for a fair while. It is extraordinary.

London is full of magnificent and barely believable things. It is far more than just an ugly and irredeemable crime nexus. London is far more than merely the disgusting twentieth-century architecture which despoils its face here and there. It is far more than merely the crime statistics from its most diverse communities. It is, in fact, the epicentre of England’s cultural heritage. It is a repository of wonders, a giant open ark of treasure. Those that turn their nose up at it, or who turn their backs upon it without reservation, are turning their backs on one of the most fantastic cities men have ever created.