Fleet Street used to be synonymous with newspapers.
The Telegraph and Express buildings can still be seen, but the newspapers long ago moved - first to nearby streets such as Fetter Lane and most recently to outlying areas: the Guardian to Farringdon and then King's Cross, the Times to Wapping, the Telegraph to Canary Wharf and then Victoria.
The street's history as a publishing centre though goes back way before the invention of newspapers - Caxton's apprentice Wynkyn de Worde set a press up here in 1500 and there were always booksellers and printers on the street from then on.
Booksellers also once used the old St Paul's cathedral churchyard as a market for their wares.
The art deco Daily Telegraph building still dominates one side of the street, though it's now the headquarters of investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Giant columns tower the façade, giving it a feeling that is part skyscraper, part Greek temple - complete modernity in the language of classical architecture.
More uncompromising is the Daily Express building, known in its day as the "black Lubyanka" because of its black and chrome and streamlined curves.
Contrast that with the Reuters building on the other side of the road, a classical work by Lutyens that breathes the solidity of the British Empire, very much "my word is my bond" against the brashness of the Express' new age.
Where there are journalists, of course, there are pubs and Fleet Street has a number of fine pub buildings.
Most antique of the lot is the Cheshire Cheese, in two tiny seventeenth-century houses; gloomy rooms full of wood panelling, with an open fire warming the bar in winter.
Dickens would have felt at home here, with a pint of Sam Smith's and a creaky chair to settle into.
The Old Bell is said to have been built for Wren's workmen on St Bride's in 1670; it's been the Twelve Bells, the Old Swan, the Golden Bell, and it's everyone's idea of a traditional English pub from the stained glass window proclaiming its name to the wood panelling and bare floorboards.
Behind the Bell is the church of St Bride's, with its wedding-cake spire, set in its own little courtyard - one of the City's most intimate outdoor spaces.
Fleet Street's other church, further west, is St Dunstan-in-the-West, a Victorian gothic church with a truncated spire.
Though rebuilt, it retains several curiosities from the earlier church on the site - a clock with the figure of the giants Gog and Magog which strike the bells, and a statue of Queen Elizabeth I which used to stand on the Old Ludgate.
Next to her is a bust of Lord Northcliffe, founder of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror - you're never far from a newspaperman on this street! Although Fleet Street has lost its newspapers and is now home to investment banks and solicitors' firms, it's still a fine street with its narrow artery throbbing with traffic, lined with interesting buildings and intriguing bits of history.
But you'll never smell printing ink here again and I hear the famously reactionary El Vino even serves women at the bar these days.
The Telegraph and Express buildings can still be seen, but the newspapers long ago moved - first to nearby streets such as Fetter Lane and most recently to outlying areas: the Guardian to Farringdon and then King's Cross, the Times to Wapping, the Telegraph to Canary Wharf and then Victoria.
The street's history as a publishing centre though goes back way before the invention of newspapers - Caxton's apprentice Wynkyn de Worde set a press up here in 1500 and there were always booksellers and printers on the street from then on.
Booksellers also once used the old St Paul's cathedral churchyard as a market for their wares.
The art deco Daily Telegraph building still dominates one side of the street, though it's now the headquarters of investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Giant columns tower the façade, giving it a feeling that is part skyscraper, part Greek temple - complete modernity in the language of classical architecture.
More uncompromising is the Daily Express building, known in its day as the "black Lubyanka" because of its black and chrome and streamlined curves.
Contrast that with the Reuters building on the other side of the road, a classical work by Lutyens that breathes the solidity of the British Empire, very much "my word is my bond" against the brashness of the Express' new age.
Where there are journalists, of course, there are pubs and Fleet Street has a number of fine pub buildings.
Most antique of the lot is the Cheshire Cheese, in two tiny seventeenth-century houses; gloomy rooms full of wood panelling, with an open fire warming the bar in winter.
Dickens would have felt at home here, with a pint of Sam Smith's and a creaky chair to settle into.
The Old Bell is said to have been built for Wren's workmen on St Bride's in 1670; it's been the Twelve Bells, the Old Swan, the Golden Bell, and it's everyone's idea of a traditional English pub from the stained glass window proclaiming its name to the wood panelling and bare floorboards.
Behind the Bell is the church of St Bride's, with its wedding-cake spire, set in its own little courtyard - one of the City's most intimate outdoor spaces.
Fleet Street's other church, further west, is St Dunstan-in-the-West, a Victorian gothic church with a truncated spire.
Though rebuilt, it retains several curiosities from the earlier church on the site - a clock with the figure of the giants Gog and Magog which strike the bells, and a statue of Queen Elizabeth I which used to stand on the Old Ludgate.
Next to her is a bust of Lord Northcliffe, founder of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror - you're never far from a newspaperman on this street! Although Fleet Street has lost its newspapers and is now home to investment banks and solicitors' firms, it's still a fine street with its narrow artery throbbing with traffic, lined with interesting buildings and intriguing bits of history.
But you'll never smell printing ink here again and I hear the famously reactionary El Vino even serves women at the bar these days.