Leadenhall Market

You're standing inside one of London's most beautiful Victorian buildings — all ornate ironwork, painted ceilings, and cobblestones. But look down. Directly beneath your feet lie the remains of Roman London's Forum and Basilica, rebuilt around one hundred AD to be the largest Roman building north of the Alps. Bigger than Trafalgar Square. The administrative heart of Londinium is right here, under a market that now sells artisan cheese and craft beer.

The current structure was designed by Horace Jones in eighteen eighty-one — the same architect who designed Tower Bridge. Jones had a thing for ornamental ironwork and didn't hold back. The cream and maroon colour scheme, the glass roof, the dragon motifs — it's all his. The market itself has been here in some form since the fourteenth century, originally as a poultry and game market. The name probably comes from a lead-roofed mansion that stood on the site.

Now, if you're a Harry Potter fan, head to Bull's Head Passage. That's the narrow alley running off the south side of the market. In the first film, it doubled as the exterior of Diagon Alley and the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron. The blue doorway at number forty-two was the pub entrance. The set designers didn't need to change much — the Victorian market already looked more magical than most film sets.

This is the kind of London layering that gets to you if you think about it. Romans built their civic centre here two thousand years ago. Medieval merchants sold poultry here. Victorians wrapped it in painted iron. And then a fictional wizard walked through it to buy a wand. Same spot. Two millennia of stories, piled on top of each other.