Non-trivial tour guide and travel advisor Daryna Venger

In this tour, we will see not only the millionaires’ village of Marylebone (it is the village that the descendants of the great Cavendish, Portman, Oxford, or Harley families like to call their home), but also the Wallace collection. Let’s start with an amazing coffee and dessert in Feya in the atmospheric shopping quarter of St. Christopher’s, which grew up thanks to the enthusiasm of the legendary Octavia Hill in the 1870s.

Here we will be met by a public bathroom that has become a cafe, and a famous auction decided to do fashion. Then we are waiting for the legendary and gossipy pharmacy of the royal family and Wigmore Hall — a concert hall with a scandalous «German» past and the ghost of Bachstein. Together we will figure out where Lord Byron and Admiral Nelson, Paul McCartney, Mark Twain, and the incarnation of the god Ja, Emperor Haile Selassie lived. We are waiting for architectural masterpieces of the Regency era (John Nash) and Art Deco (Eric Grill). It is in the streets of the Marylebone village that both political scandals and the sexual revolution with pleasure gardens will meet us. Of course, I will tell tales of the philosopher Francis Bacon, the conflict of religions in this area, and in continuation of the theme of pleasure — wonderful cheeses in the French Le Fromagerie. Get ready to smell, taste, and take home wine, chocolate, and perfumes!

In the second part of the tour, I will invite you to visit the Wallace Collection — a small by the standards of London, an almost home-like museum located in the heart of the city, where you can see the original family art collection collected between 1760 and 1880 by the first four Marquesses of Hertford from the Seymour-Conway family and, of course, by Sir Richard Wallace himself (1818-1890) for his London mansion Hertford House in Manchester Square. In the museum, we will talk in detail about Richard, and about why the collection was donated to the British nation in 1900. All the original interiors have been preserved. In some rooms you will be able to experience the everyday surroundings of the last Queen of France — several rooms from her palace were relocated, including everything in them, even the wallpapers! We will study the main masterpieces of the collection: from the old masters from the XV to the XVII centuries — paintings by Titian, Van Dyck, Murillo, Velasquez, and Dutch and Flemish paintings to French Baroque and Rococo. We will see the richest collection of magnificent French furniture of the 18th and 19th centuries outside France! And of course, last but not least, the museum has the largest medieval weaponry in Europe, including a selection of knight ammunition and ceremonial weapons — this is a rare opportunity to see what powerful people of the past gifted each other.

In the last part of the tour, we will talk about the most beautiful bookstore in the city, the baptism of the scandalous heiress Nelson, and the secret wedding of poet Robert Browning, where almost all private medical practices in London are located, and why the city gallows was located nearby. We will see the first working address of Michael Faraday, and the last one of William Turner, the legendary British painter. We will talk about the industrial revolution in the UK and how the problem of superfluous people was solved here at that time. You will also see how the 21st century seeps into the territory of this cozy area — this area has a new ultramodern transport system, as well as Hollywood celebrities; houses, who have chosen this area for their London residence.