Surreal riveted sea forts once protected the Kent shores from German attack.

An exercise in radical design and social living that became the epicenter of Soviet spy networks in London.

One of the greatest movie directors of all time lived and worked in this London flat from 1926 to 1939.

A quiet, semi-secret square with statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Virginia Woolf, and a conscientious objectors stone.

More than a million titles fill the labyrinthine shelves of this prestigious private library.

This historic London residence was once the womb of Scientology.

Where Aleister Crowley attempted to seize the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in a mask and a kilt.

These official units of measurement—including chains and perches—lie hidden beneath tourists' feet in a popular London hub.

A little slice of Japan and its aesthetics in London's Holland Park.

The lab where the scientist made his groundbreaking discoveries is preserved on the basement floor of the Faraday Museum.

A makeshift shrine to the late rock star is still kept up on the nondescript façade outside 1 Logan Place.

An easily overlooked stretch of ornate window fronts and gaslight lamps that could be right from the pages of Dickens.

A charming 17th-century alley is lined with secondhand bookstores and antiquarian shops.

The signs of a long buried road can still be found hidden beneath a London sewer grate.

London's smallest police station is barely the size of a phone booth.

Home to Alan Turing, the cracking of the Enigma code, and Captain Ridley's shooting party.

The world's oldest model village.

If God were a skater, this would clearly be His park of choice.

A kaleidoscopic warehouse-maze of handmade neon signs.

Giant, friendly pelicans in Central London, the most unlikely of places.

A community of artists and entrepreneurs seeks a simpler life on London's waterways.

The sculpture of the deceased cockatoo flops atop its personal plinth.

This remarkably intact, 260-year-old cargo ship is only visible at the lowest of spring tides.

Huge concrete structures designed as an early warning system for Britain to detect enemy aircraft.