"Oh, the flesh-eating beetles are in there," shrugs our guide, pointing to a locked door. This is the Darwin Centre, where a gruesome surprise lurks around every corner. The annexe to the Natural History Museum holds some 22 million biological specimens bottled up in jars - it's like walking into David Attenborough's Facebook account. Much of the collection is freely available to anyone who wants to see it, and is stored over eight floors,......

View Larger Map Cold War bunkers, abandoned Tube stations, buried rivers, deep level shelters...London's concealed features are among its most intriguing. So, in age-old Londonist tradition, we've created a map to try and show what a hollow city this is. And we need your help. We've plotted the more obvious features - the Fleet River, Zone 1 ghost stations, the Kingsway telephone exchange, etc. But we know there's a lot more down there. Please use......

What happens in a Tube station when all the passengers have gone home? Why do Tube workers carry cards about rat piss? And why isn't standing on the right of an escalator necessarily a good thing? Londonist finds answers on our latest nocturnal investigation. Some of London's busiest Tube stations are in a mess. Missing tiles and chicken-wire cornices are a familiar site, especially at King's Cross and Leicester Square. It's a case of......

In which we spend a night with some decayed, 17th century dudes, in the catacombs beneath London Bridge. Beneath the Surrey side of London Bridge, behind doors that once led to the robot-kitsch Cynthia's Bar, a new attraction is taking shape. The London Bridge Experience will open in February. Part museum, part CGI scare-fest, the LBE will take visitors on a historical tour of the 2000 year-old crossing, and down into previously disused catacombs......

Thanks to a new grant, previously unseen areas of St Paul’s may be opened to the public. The £250,000 pot from the World Monument’s Fund, could see a new ‘exploration centre’ in the crypt, and access to the Trophy Room, containing Wren’s original model. But what else might we find when they open up more of St Paul’s? 1. God. 2. Thousands of tourists 3. A couple of Londoners 4. Lara Croft’s entombed remains......

Updates from a Londonista at today's Integrated Volume Testing at St Pancras International, the new Eurostar terminal. (A sneak preview of the new station before it opens on 14th November, with Eurostar moving from Waterloo overnight.) 7.15am. Early start, ugh. 8.00. It's quite a privilege to be here and get a sneak preview of the place. But they'd better have coffee. 8.30. The first queue of many - most of the participants (300 of......

Londonist goes to church and gets stuck up a ladder covered in pigeon shit. Before we start, we’d just like to say something to the Russians. Oy! Stop nicking our church designs, and repurposing them into spacecraft. Only we’re allowed to do that. Thank you. Right, on with business. We’ve all seen St Anne’s, Soho. It’s pretty much the only tall churchy thing in Soho, sitting behind a junkie-proof fence to the South of Wardour......

St James wine merchant Berry Brothers and Rudd could be considered as a family-run community corner shop. But when you consider that the family are eighth generation owners, their local community includes the Queen and Prince Charles, and even the ‘corner’ is formed from Henry VIII’s tennis court, you soon realise that this place is in no danger from supermarket encroachment. It's possibly the poshest corner shop in history. Londonist, lucky us, recently wangled......

The Treatment Rooms is a privately owned three-story house in the West London suburb of Chiswick, which over the past several years has had its exterior walls transformed into an ongoing self-contained conceptual piece of mosaic art. The vibrant and well executed mosaics, which cover the front wall of the house and the back garden wall are well worth paying a visit to see. Recently, Londonist took an opportunity to visit the Treatment Rooms......

Seeking somewhere new to have a picnic lunch? Perhaps you're an MP in need of an oasis of calm? Or a Vauxhall clubber who's lost their way on the north bank? St John's Gardens provides the perfect place. A small but perfectly-formed garden in Millbank, its high trees, huge flowerbeds, formidable fountain and generous smattering of benches make it a lovely summer spot and only a hop and skip from Parliament or the river.......

Ahhhh, Greenwich Indoor Market. How do we love thee... let us count the ways. 1. The Arts Collective. A whole little street of wonderful artists covering everything from the abstract to modern art to photography. Check out Anna Hillmans 'amazingness' stand. 2. Essential Music. Selling the best music at extra cheap prices. Don't be deterred by the closing down sign: it always says that to trick the tourists into going in. Hehehe! 3. The......

Kirsty MacColl's final album was the rather wonderfully Cuban-influenced Tropical Brainstorm which included the 2000 hit 'In these Shoes'. Her career had always had its fair share of ups and downs, but a disproportionate amount of her seminal work (either her own songs or cover versions) seems to tap directly into our own feelings and memories at the time - Walking Down Madison, collaboration with the Pogues, A New England, Days. After the success......

Believe it or not, this Londonista has never been to the V&A Museum in Kensington. So this was definitely on our list of London attractions to explore. In fact, we were getting ready to go there last weekend – looking up directions on their website no less, when we were distracted by a link to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden (a.k.a. the National Museum of the Performing Arts), which is apparently part of......

We’ve had to break the rules a bit this week. Normally one of the basic requirements of Getting Off Our Arse is that we need to investigate a bit of London that we’ve not really explored before. However, on this occasion we were far too hungover to venture far, or attempt anything even vaguely adventurous. (That’s the last time that this Londonista spends the early hours of the morning attempting to teach ‘British drinking......

Some of you might recall that a few years ago the Central Line was suspended for almost three months, following a derailment at Chancery Lane. At that time, this meant that this Londonista’s daily commute often involved walking from Bank to Holborn, past St Paul’s and across Holborn Viaduct – a part of our journey that soon got annoying, but was still quicker than taking the overwhelmed bus services. (London Underground never did cough......

Following last week’s successful attempt to look at a bit of London from the perspective of a tourist, we thought we would have another go at visiting a ‘tourist attraction’ that we’d not yet encountered. A friend had recommended HMS Belfast, and we didn’t think we had been before (apart from possible vague memories of a school trip many decades ago), so we traipsed off to Tooley Street to check it out. A bit......

This week, in our ongoing quest to explore interesting bits of London that we’ve not yet experienced, we decided to act like tourists. No, we’re not talking about congregating in large groups and milling around aimlessly in front of ticket barriers and escalators, although that seemingly popular tourist pastime does sound like fun. No instead we’ve opted to check out mainstream ‘tourist attractions’, to see if they are really worth the attention that visitors......

Following our visit to St Pancras Old Church, the next destination in our exploration of St Pancras was The British Library. Retracing our steps back through the seemingly deserted Somers Town, we walked into the spick-and-span building of the UK’s national library. The building’s contemporary design almost seemed to be intended to obscure much of its history, which was quite a contrast after the much-less-spoilt church that we had just visited. Still, we suppose......

Having spent an enjoyable couple of hours exploring leafy Holland Park last week, our next mission in our continuing quest to find out more about the city we live in was to investigate some parts of the decidedly more urban locale of St Pancras (sans audio-guide this time). Our first stop was to be St Pancras Old Church, at the top end of Pancras Road. Easier said than done, as it happens – we......

We’ve remarked before that, as London residents, we can often be rather complacent about the interesting sights and sounds that our city provides us. London is full of fascinating places and stimulating attractions, but because we know we can see them any time we want we sometimes tend not to bother. So, to attempt to redress the balance a teeny little bit, we’re going to explore some of the areas to which we’ve never......

Big Ben is possibly London's most famous landmark. Its chimes ring out all over London, and indeed the world through the BBC World service. But how many people can claim to have been up the clock tower and even behind the clock faces? Londonist's man on the inside, Nick, managed to secure himself a trip up the tower. Here's what he found: First, a little history: when Londonist had their big day out to......

No, really. And here’s why. They’re everywhere, and yet have you ever noticed them? They’re seemingly mundane, yet they come in a huge variety of styles. They’re still around, even though they’ve been pointless for decades. (see also, here). So we hope you agree that a small tribute is in order. You can find them lurking in the pavements outside most Georgian or Victorian houses. Until as late as the 1960s, these tiny portals......

We pointed out on Monday that, as Londoners, it's very easy to ignore the very things that make the capital so special. While we sometimes get annoyed with the hoards of tourists who seem to be constantly underfoot, they get to experience a very different city from the one that we all too often take for granted. To try and rectify this we've been aiming to get out and about a bit more in......

Yes, you read that sign correctly. ‘Shoot the Aged’. Erstwhile pine, and general bric-a-brac, merchants of Lee Road near Blackheath. Their genius strapline read ‘A non-charitable profit making organisation using non-voluntary staff’. Since this photo was taken in 1998, this treasure of individuality has no doubt been converted into some media agency or generic coffee house. And next-door-but one is the ‘Bitter Experience’ wine sellers. Now, just another trendy restaurant. Ah, the lament of......

We like modern Italians so very much, what with their rich foods and fine wines, innate sense of style, glamorous crime syndicates and all that dolce vita stuff. But we love their Roman forbears, who came, saw, conquered and, most importantly for us, founded this great city we live in. So, with the BBC about to screen its raunchy new blockbuster series ‘Rome’, we went in search of Londinium, which Caesar’s geezers laid down......

After M@'s tribute to one of London's largest patches of green space on Monday, it's time to pay homage to a tiny, undistinguished garden. Rennie Garden nestles in a scrap of land not much larger than a squash court, sandwiched between Blackfriars Road, the old Daily Express building (the "Grey Lubyanka" of Private Eye fame) and the steps that connect the southern end of Blackfriars bridge with the South Bank. All it consists of......

A big park for posh people? A mountain-biker's paradise? Inspiration to some of England's greatest painters and poets? Or a sordid playground for fornicating couples and sodomists? Whatever your opinion of Hampstead Heath, you're probably right. The 800 acres of grasslands, meadows, woodland, ponds and bogs are truly all things to all people, and stand as a verdant reflection of London's diversity in minicosm (being too large to count as a microcosm). The Heath......

Funny place, Holborn: it's not the City; it's not the West End; it refuses to be pinned down to any point of the compass. It is obscure and recondite to most people, a lesser-known and unappealing neighbour to Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell. There are diddly-squat famous attractions here; it's biggest draw being the ornate law colleges of Greys Inn and Lincolns Inn, but they're generally closed at weekends. Any tourists alighting from Holborn Tube will......

When it comes to griping about transport in the capital, Londonist is as guilty as the next blog. But we hope you'll agree that the bus and Tube networks deserve the highest praise this week for their commendable response to the blasts. It is with incredible bravery that thousands of bus drivers were back behind the wheel within hours of the tragedy. One day on, and the Tubes were running an almost full service.......