City — Pepys's Lost Diary Secrets

Your quest for Samuel Pepys's diary begins at St Olave's Church, Hart Street, a medieval church built around 1050. Restored after the Great Fire of London in 1666, it is the burial place of Samuel Pepys and his wife Elizabeth, interred in 1703. This location is grimly known as 'St-Ghastly Olave' due to the 400 victims of the 1665 plague buried in its churchyard. Its Elizabethan gate, dating from 1563 and adorned with skulls, is a direct reference to this epidemic that marked Greater London. It is here, among the shadows of the departed, that the first fragment of Pepys's diary awaits you.

Continue towards Seething Lane, a narrow street in the Monument district, just 200m from St Olave's Church. This was Samuel Pepys's former residence from 1660 to 1666, before it was destroyed in the Great Fire. It was in this house that Pepys wrote poignant entries in his diary about the bubonic plague of 1665, documenting daily life in London under the grip of the disease. Your route then takes you to Trinity Square Gardens, created in 1875 on the former site of the Tower Hill Execution Dock, where pirates were executed until 1830. A statue of Samuel Pepys, erected in 1884 by G.F. Watts and 2.7m tall, stands there, observing the flow of the Thames and the vestiges of the Tower of London.

The path then leads you to Billingsgate Market, a historic fish market mentioned in Pepys's diary on June 5, 1666, for its foul smells. Although the current site, rebuilt in 1876, is a Grade II* listed Victorian building from 1973 covering 10,000 m², the echo of 12th-century merchants still resonates. A short walk away, St Margaret Pattens Church, an 11th-century church rebuilt by Christopher Wren after 1666 and completed in 1680, with its 25m tower listed Grade I in 1950, was a place where Pepys attended services during the 1665 plague. These locations are key landmarks in his narrative of survival and faith in the heart of the City.

Your exploration of the City of London takes you to the Royal Exchange, whose first building was founded by Thomas Gresham in 1565. The current third building, completed in 1844 by William Tite, with its 91m diameter inner courtyard and Grade I listed status, retains the commercial spirit Pepys discovered there in 1660, noting the merchants and the clock. Nearby, the Custom House, a neoclassical building rebuilt in 1817 by John Smirke, then enlarged in 1911-1914, recalls Pepys's role as Clerk of the Acts at the Admiralty nearby from 1660 to 1673. Its five-story facade, Grade II listed in 1950, testifies to the importance of trade in Greater London.

Your journey concludes at Guildhall, the municipal guildhall founded in 1411, where Roman crypts dating from 70-410 AD were excavated in 1946. Pepys attended civic banquets here in the 1660s, before the 46m long great hall was damaged by the Great Fire of 1666 and the 1940 bombings. By reconstructing his diary, you have not only discovered the words of Samuel Pepys but also the scars and resilience of London. This thematic circuit offers you a deep understanding of Greater London's heritage, from the words of a privileged witness to the monuments that have withstood the test of time and fire.