REGENT’S PARK
London’s most attractive and popular park, with a wide range of landscapes from soccer-scarred fields to Italian-style formal gardens. The exclusive-sounding Inner Circle road separates the flower-filled Queen Mary’s Gardens from the park without. On the northern edge of the Inner Circle, D!St. John’s Lodge Gardens a blaze of lavender entered through an easy-to-miss gate on the Inner Circle itself remain open to the public. The Holme, overlooking the lake on the western side of the Inner Circle, was designed in 1818 by the 18-year-old prodigy Decimus Burton. (500 acres stretching north from Marylebone Rd. to Camden Town. Tube: Baker St. Regent’s Park, Great Portland St, or Camden Town. Open daily 6am-dusk. Free.)
ACADEMIA LONDON The strip of land along Gower Street and immediately to its west is London’s academic heartland. Established in 1828, University College London was the first in Britain to admit Catholics, Jews, and women. The embalmed body of founder Jeremy Bentham has been on display in the South Cloister since 1850. (Main entrance on Gower St. South Cloister entrance through the courtyard. Tube: Warren St.) Now the administrative headquarters of the University of London, Senate House was the model for the Ministry of Truth in 1984; George Orwell worked there as part of the BBC propaganda unit in WWII. (At the southern end of Malet St. Tube: Goodge St.)
