Hotels near St. Paul's Cathedral in London
St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in England, is Wren's masterpiece. With it, he brought a repertoire of new forms (the dome, for example) and architectural combinations into English architecture. The building is something of an encyclopedia of Wren's impressions of the architecture of the continent... Wren fashioned the façade of St. Paul's with two tiers of paired Corinthian columns like those of the Louvre and framed them between towers inspired by those of Borromini's Roman church of S. Agnese. Above the two-story base rises a tremendous peripteral dome that reinterprets Bramante's Tempietto of 1502. Pietro da Cortona's projecting curved porches of Santa Maria della Pace have become St. Paul's transept porches.
There has been a church on Ludgate Hill dedicated to St. Paul, London's patron saint, since 604. The Normans began building another cathedral on this site in 1087. By the 17th century it was in a state of decay and in 1634 Inigo Jones was employed to restore it to its former glory. On 2nd September, 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed a large area of the city including St. Paul's Cathedral. Sir Christopher Wren was given the task of designing and rebuilding St. Paul's - a task that was to take him thirty-five years to complete. The most dramatic aspect of St. Paul's was its great dome. It was the second largest dome ever built (the largest was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome). Both domes were based on the one in the Pantheon built by the ancient Romans. When Christopher Wren died in 1723 he became the first person to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.
We have a large selection of quality hotels accommodation within easy reach of St. Paul's Cathedral and other London attractions