In London, you don't just put plain arms on a bench on the Chelsea Embankment, or let a plain post hold up a streetlight on the Victoria Embankment, or just paint your bridge a dull gray. I've collected a group of photos here showing some of these delightful details, found all over London. (You can see more of these kinds of interesting details in the website section covering statues and public art, and there are more examples in this Flickr set.)

If you want to see where almost all of the photos in this section were taken, here's a map:

View a larger version of this London Architecture map here.

First, those streetlight poles—useful and oh, so decorative! Left to right, the pictures were taken on the South Bank, in the East End, and along the Victoria Embankment:

Once surrounded by a more heavily-defended boundary, City of London real estate today is marked by insignia such as these:

And how about those benches and bridges!? Clockwise, from upper left: benches along the South Bank and the Chelsea Embankment, and bridge decorations at the Blackfriars and Chelsea Bridges:

Then, of course, buildings sport such wonderful decorative details. Here are just a few:

Finally, here's a beautifully appropriate decorative touch to the top of a gate at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich—you could even have guessed that, don't you think?

Back to Dream Season home • Back to London home • Back to Architecture and Decoration home