In 43 AD, Roman soldiers drove the first stakes into the north bank of the Thames and called their settlement Londinium. Nearly two thousand years later, that same patch of earth is one of the most visited cities on the planet — home to over 170 museums, 8 million residents speaking more than 300 languages, and a skyline that layers Roman walls against Norman towers, Victorian Gothic spires, and 21st-century glass shards. London doesn't present its history neatly; it ambushes you with it. You might be waiting for the Tube at Mansion House and notice a fragment of the original Roman city wall embedded in the platform wall. You might be eating a salt-beef bagel in Brick Lane and suddenly realise you're standing in what was once a Huguenot refugee neighbourhood. That layered, sometimes chaotic accumulation of stories is exactly what makes London so endlessly rewarding — and so easy to get wrong if you don't know where to look. This guide digs beneath the postcard surface to give you the city's real depth.