The Romans founded Londinium in AD 47, choosing a spot on the north bank of the Thames where the river was narrow enough to bridge and deep enough for the ships that would supply the new colony with olive oil, wine, and the material of civilisation. The settlement burned to the ground in the Boudican revolt of AD 60, the Iceni queen, her daughters raped by the Romans and her kingdom annexed, led a force that burned Londinium, Colchester, and St Albans to the ground, killing an estimated 70,000 Romans and Romanised Britons before being defeated somewhere in the Midlands. The Romans rebuilt, and Londinium, the walled city, the forum, the amphitheatre (discovered in 1988 under the Guildhall, the entrance now visible in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery), became the capital of Roman Britain. The Roman wall stood for 1,100 years, and the outline of the Roman city is still visible in the street plan of the modern financial district. London is not a young city, it is a city built on the ashes of its own destruction, repeatedly, for 1,977 years, and every street in the City of London, if you listen carefully, is still speaking Latin. Here is why London remains the greatest city in Europe.

London, Why It Endures

• The theatre, the music, and the culture machine: London is the second-largest cultural economy in the world (after New York), and the West End, the 39 theatres of the commercial theatre district, is the beating heart of the global English-language theatre. The plays (the National Theatre, the Olivier, the Lyttelton, and the Dorfman, the publicly subsidised theatre that produces the most ambitious work in London. The £10 standing tickets for sold-out shows are the best cultural bargain in Britain), the musicals (The Book of Mormon, Hamilton, Les Misérables, the commercial blockbusters that run for decades, the £25 day tickets available at the box office each morning), and the fringe (the Donmar Warehouse, the Almeida, the Bridge Theatre, the smaller theatres that premiere the work that moves to the West End and to Broadway). For music: the O2 Arena (the 20,000-capacity arena), the Royal Albert Hall (the Proms, the BBC Promenade Concerts, the world’s largest classical music festival, the last night, the flags, the Land of Hope and Glory), and the small venues (the 100 Club on Oxford Street, the punk, the jazz, and the history; Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, the jazz, the cocktails, and the atmosphere). Essential tip: the TodayTix app for last-minute theatre tickets, the Royal Opera House stand-by tickets (£10 for the best seats in the house, released at 10am on the day of the performance for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera), and the free lunchtime concerts at the churches (St Martin-in-the-Fields, free, 1pm, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, the best lunch break in London)
• The food, more than the cliché: London has 77 Michelin-starred restaurants, the most diverse food culture on the planet (300 languages spoken across the city, each community bringing its cuisine), and the markets, Borough Market (the oldest food market in London, 1,000 years of trading history, the stall of Richard Haward’s Oysters, the Hawards have been harvesting oysters in the Thames Estuary for eight generations), Maltby Street (the smaller, less touristy alternative to Borough, the Ethiopian coffee, the Ghanaian stew, and the St John Bakery doughnuts), and the street food of Southbank Centre (the weekend market, the 20 traders, the river view, and the food from every continent). The essential London food experiences: the bacon naan at Dishoom (the Irani-style café in Covent Garden, the queue is legendary, go for breakfast at 8am on a weekday and you will walk straight in), the pie and mash at F. Cooke on Broadway Market (the minced beef pie, the parsley liquor, the jellied eels, the most authentic taste of the Victorian East End, and a meal that costs £5.50), and the curry on Brick Lane (the Bangla Town of East London, the 40 curry houses, and the touts who will offer you a free beer and 20% off, pick the one with the best tout and you will rarely be disappointed)
• The museums that define the world: The British Museum, the V&A (the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, 2.27 million objects, and the Cast Courts, the enormous plaster casts of Michelangelo’s David, Trajan’s Column, and the Portico de la Gloria, rescued from the destruction of war and the erosion of time. Free. The Friday Late, the last Friday of the month, the museum open until 10pm, the DJs, the bars, and the most civilised Friday night in London), the Natural History Museum (the blue whale skeleton in the Hintze Hall, Hope, the largest animal ever to have lived on Earth, suspended from the ceiling of the Romanesque cathedral of a building, the sense of scale that reminds you, in the gentlest possible way, that you are very small), the Science Museum, and the Design Museum, all free, all open every day, and all offering more than you can see in a lifetime. Pick one per visit. Do it properly. Return for the rest