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Buckingham Palace



Aug & Sept daily 9.30am–4.15pm; ￡9.50; advance booking on tel 0171/930 4832. Victoria tube.

The graceless colossus of Buckingham Palace, popularly known as "Buck House", has served as the monarch's permanent London residence only since the accession of Victoria. Bought by George III in 1762, the building was overhauled by Nash in the late 1820s, and again by Aston Webb in time for George V's coronation in 1913, producing a palace that's about as bland as it's possible to be.

For two months of the year, the hallowed portals are grudgingly nudged open; timed tickets are sold from the tent-like box office in Green Park at the western end of The Mall. The interior, however, is a bit of an anticlimax: of the palace's 660 rooms you're permitted to see just 18, and there's little sign of life, as the Queen decamps to Scotland every summer. For the other ten months of the year there's little to do here, since the palace is closed to visitors – not that this deters the crowds who mill around the railings, and gather in some force to watch the Changing of the Guard, in which a detachment of the Queen's Foot Guards marches to appropriate martial music from St James's Palace (unless it rains, that is).

You can view a small selection of the Royal Collection – which is more than three times larger than the National Gallery's – at the Queen's Picture Gallery (daily 9.30am–4.30pm; ￡4), round the south side of the palace on Buckingham Palace Road. The exhibitions usually include some works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt and Canaletto, which make up the bulk of the collection.

There's more pageantry on show at the Nash-built Royal Mews (April–Sept Tues–Thurs noon–4pm; Oct–Dec Wed only; ￡3.50), further along Buckingham Palace Road. The royal carriages, lined up under a glass canopy in the courtyard, are the main attraction, in particular the Gold Carriage, made for George III in 1762, smothered in 22-carat gilding and weighing four tons, its axles supporting four life-size figures.

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Vietnam Veterans Memorial



Constitution Avenue at 21st Street; closest Metro Foggy Bottom-GWU. Daily 24hr, staffed 8am–midnight. Admission free.
Cutting sharply into the green lawn of the Mall, the small and simple Vietnam Veterans Memorial serves as a sombre and powerful reminder of the nearly 60,000 US soldiers who died in Vietnam. The pathway that slopes down from the grass forms a gash in the earth, its increasing depth symbolizing the increasing involvement of US forces in the war. Alongside, a black marble wall is carved with the names of every soldier who died, in chronological order from 1959 to 1975.

The memorial was designed by Maya Lin, as a 21-year-old architecture student. When it was first erected in 1982, there was some outcry from veterans groups about its anti-war connotations. By way of appeasement, in 1984 a more traditional statue of three heroic soldiers was placed nearby, under a floodlit American flag. More lobbying led to the establishment of the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993, which stands in a grove of trees at the eastern end of the main site, to mark the 11,000 American women who served in the conflict.

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The Tower of Pisa



The Tower of Pisa is the bell tower of the Cathedral. Its construction began in the august of 1173 and continued (with two long interruptions) for about two hundred years, in full fidelity to the original project, whose architect is still uncertain.
In the past it was widely believed that the inclination of the Tower was part of the project ever since its beginning, but now we know that it is not so. The Tower was designed to be "vertical" (and even if it did not lean it would still be one of the most remarkable bell towers in Europe), and started to incline during its construction.

Both because of its inclination, and its beauty, from 1173 up to the present the Tower has been the object of very special attention. During its construction efforts were made to halt the incipient inclination through the use of special construction devices; later colums and other damaged parts were substituted in more than one occasion; today, interventions are being carried out within the sub-soil in order to significantly reduce the inclination and to make sure that Tower will have a long life.

In all this story it is possible to find a meaningful constant, the "genetic code" of the Tower: its continual interaction with the soil on which it was built. Today's (1999) works for the safeguard and the conservation of the Tower with very advanced methodologies are designed to fully respect this constant.

Official web site:http://torre.duomo.pisa.it/

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Roman Colosseum



The Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater was begun by Vespasian, inaugurated by Titus in 80 A.D. and completed by Domitian. Located on marshy land between the Esquiline and Caelian Hills, it was the first permanent amphitheater to be built in Rome. Its monumental size and grandeur as well as its practical and efficient organization for producing spectacles and controlling the large crowds make it one of the great architectural monuments achieved by the ancient Romans.
The amphitheater is a vast ellipse with tiers of seating for 50,000 spectators around a central elliptical arena. Below the wooden arena floor, there was a complex set of rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other provisions for staging the spectacles. Eighty walls radiate from the arena and support vaults for passageways, stairways and the tiers of seats. At the outer edge circumferential arcades link each level and the stairways between levels.

The three tiers of arcades are faced by three-quarter columns and entablatures, Doric in the first story, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in the third. Above them is an attic story with Corinthian pilasters and small square window openings in alternate bays. At the top brackets and sockets carry the masts from which the velarium, a canopy for shade, was suspended.

The construction utilized a careful combination of types: concrete for the foundations, travertine for the piers and arcades, tufa infill between piers for the walls of the lower two levels, and brick-faced concrete used for the upper levels and for most of the vaults.

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The Colosseum was designed to hold 50,000 spectators, and it had approximately eighty entrances so crowds could arrive and leave easily and quickly.

The plan is a vast ellipse, measuring externally 188 m x 156 m (615 ft x 510 ft), with the base of the building covering about 6 acres. Vaults span between eighty radial walls to support tiers of seating and for passageways and stairs.

The facade of three tiers of arches and an attic story is about 48.5 m (158 ft) tall — roughly equivalent to a 12-15 story building.

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Hollywood





If a single place-name encapsulates the LA dream of glamor, money and overnight success, it's Hollywood. Millions of tourists arrive on pilgrimages; millions more flock here in pursuit of riches and glory. Hollywood is a weird combination of insatiable optimism and total despair. It really does blur the edges of fact and fiction, simply because so much seems possible – and yet so little, for most people, actually is. Those who do strike it rich here get out as soon as they can, just as they always have; the big film companies, too, long ago relocated well away, leaving Hollywood in isolation, with prostitution, drug dealing and seedy bookstores as the reality behind the fantasy.

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Central Hollywood
The myths, magic, fable and fantasy splattered throughout the few short blocks of Central Hollywood would put a medieval fairytale to shame. A rich sense of nostalgia pervades the area, giving it an appeal no measure of tourists or souvenir postcard stands can diminish. Although you're much more likely to find a porno theater than spot a real star, the decline which blighted Hollywood from the early 1960s is fast receding. Nevertheless the place still gets hairy after dark, with adolescents cruising Hollywood Boulevard in customized cars and occasional petty criminals on the prowl for the odd pocketbook.

The natural place to begin exploring Hollywood Boulevard is the junction of Hollywood and Vine – the classic location for budding stars to be "spotted" by big-shot directors and whisked off to fame and fortune. At 6608 Hollywood Blvd, the purple and pink Frederick's of Hollywood has been (under-) clothing Hollywood's sex goddesses since 1947, as well as mortal bodies all over the world via mail order. Inside, the lingerie museum (free) displays some of the company's best corsets, bras and panties, donated by happy big-name wearers ranging from Lana Turner to Cher.

A little further on, the Egyptian Theater at no. 6708 was financed by impresario Sid Grauman, in a modest attempt to re-create the Temple of Thebes. The very first Hollywood premiere (Robin Hood) took place here in 1922. Now owned by the city, Grauman's Thebes is currently closed for renovations as part of a three-year plan to restore the fake mummies and hieroglyphics of this temple of cinema to their former glory and remake the theater into a center for film study. No Hollywood visitor will want to miss the mundane yet magical foot and hand prints in the concrete concourse of the 1927 Chinese Theatre at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. Actress Norma Talmadge (supposedly by accident) trod in wet cement while visiting the construction site, and the practice has continued ever since, starting with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr, at the opening of King of Kings, and recently involving stars such as Al Pacino. Through the halcyon decades, this was the spot for movie first-nights. As for the building, it's an odd western version of a classical Chinese temple, replete with dodgy Chinese motifs and upturned dragon tail flanks.

The Roosevelt Hotel opposite was movieland's first luxury hotel, its Cinegrill restaurant hosting the likes of W C Fields and F Scott Fitzgerald, not to mention hangers-on like Ronald Reagan. In 1929 the first Oscars were presented here, beginning the long tradition of Hollywood rewarding itself in the absence of honors from elsewhere.

Despite the beliefs of some of their loopiest fans, even the biggest Hollywood stars have been mortal; the many LA cemeteries that hold their tombs get at least as many visitors as the city's museums. In the southeast corner of the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, near Santa Monica Boulevard and Gower Street, a mausoleum contains the resting place of Rudolph Valentino, the celebrated screen lover who died aged just 31 in 1926. To this day on each anniversary of his passing (August 23), at least one "Lady in Black" – as his posthumous devotees are known – will likely be found mourning. The achingly ostentatious memorial to Douglas Fairbanks Sr, who with his wife Mary Pickford did much to introduce social snobbery among movie-making people, is just outside. Also on view are the graves of Hollywood's more recently deceased inhabitants: an increasingly large population of Russian and Armenian immigrants.



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Griffith Park


The gentle greenery and rugged mountain slopes that make up vast Griffith Park northeast of Hollywood (daily 5am–10.30pm, mountain roads close at dusk; free) are a welcome escape from the mind-numbing hubbub of the city. The landmark Observatory (Tues–Fri 2–10pm, Sat–Sun 12.30–10pm; free) here has been seen in innumerable Hollywood films, most famously Rebel Without a Cause, and the surrounding acres add up to the largest municipal park in the country, one of the few places where LA's multitude of racial and social groups at least go through the motions of mixing together.

Above the landscaped flat sections, the hillsides are rough and wild, marked only by foot and bridle paths, leading into desolate but appealingly unspoiled terrain that gives great views over the LA basin and out to the ocean, provided the city smog isn't too thick. One way to explore is on a rented bike from Woody's Bicycle World, 3157 Los Feliz Blvd (213/661-6665), a short distance away. The park is safe enough by day, but its reputation for after-dark violence is well founded.



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Hollywood Hills

The views from the Hollywood Hills take in a bizarre assortment of opulent properties. Around these canyons and slopes, which run from Hollywood itself into Benedict Canyon above Beverly Hills, mansions are so commonplace that only the half-dozen fully blown castles (at least, Hollywood-style castles) really stand out. On Mulholland Drive are Rudolph Valentino's extravagant Falcon Lair and Errol Flynn's Mulholland House; down Benedict Canyon is the former home of actress Sharon Tate, one of the victims of the Manson Family. Guided tours can point out which is which, but for the most part you can't get close to the most elaborate dwellings anyway, and none is open to the public.
From more or less anywhere in Hollywood, you can see the Hollywood Sign, erected as a property advertisement in 1923 (when it spelt "Hollywoodland"; the "land" was removed in 1949). The sign is also famous as a suicide spot, though few have followed the 1932 example of would-be movie star Peg Entwhistle. Hers was no mean feat, the sign being as hard to reach then as it is now: from the end of Beachwood Drive (a route that affords a fine view of the sign) she picked a path slowly upwards through the thick bush, to leap to her death from the 50ft "H". For the first time in its sixty-five-year existence, the sign is being insured against earthquake damage. Infra-red cameras and radar-activated zoom lenses have been installed to catch graffiti writers. Innocent tourists who can't resist a close look are also liable for the $103 fine.

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Wall Street




The Dutch arrived here first, building a wooden wall at the edge of their small settlement to protect themselves from pro-British settlers to the north: hence the narrow canyon of today's Wall Street gained its name. It's here, behind the thin Neoclassical mask of the New York Stock Exchange, that the purse strings of the capitalist world are pulled. Take a long look at the mythological figures on the building's pediment: when the original stone figures began deteriorating in the Manhattan air, the Exchange clandestinely replaced them with these virtually indestructible sheet-metal copies, for under no circumstances was any aspect of vulnerability to be associated with the Exchange.
From the Visitors' Gallery (Mon–Fri 9.15am–4pm; free), the Exchange floor appears a mêlée of brokers and buyers, all scrambling for the elusive fractional cent on which to make a megabuck. Sit through the glib introductory film, though, and the hectic scurrying and constantly moving hieroglyphs of the stock prices make more sense.

Along with the film, there's a small exhibition on the history of the Exchange – notably quiet on the more spectacular screw-ups. The most disastrous, the notorious "Black Tuesday" of 1929, is mentioned almost in passing, perhaps because it was so obviously caused by the greed and short-sightedness of the money men themselves. In those days, shares could be bought "on margin," which meant the buyer needed to pay only a small part of their total cost, borrowing the rest using the shares as security. This worked fine as long as the market kept rising – as share dividends came in to pay off the loans, investors' money bought more shares. But it was, as Alistair Cooke put it, "a mountain of credit on a molehill of actual money," and only a small scare was needed to start the avalanche. When the market investors had to find more cash to service their debts and make up for the fall in value of their stocks, they sold off their shares cheaply. A panicked chain reaction ensued, and on October 24, sixteen million shares were traded; five days later, the whole Exchange collapsed as $125 million was wiped off stock values. Fortunes disappeared overnight: millions lost their life savings; banks, businesses and industries shut their doors; and unemployment spiraled helplessly. The Great Depression began. It says much for the safety nets that surround the market's operations today that the equally tumultuous crash of October 1987 caused comparatively negligible reverberations.