ENRICO MARTINO

Living afloat can be very attractive, also in London. At the intersection of the London's Regent's Canal and the Grand Union Canal sits the Little Venice. Another unusual spot is the Garden Barge Squame, a community of barge owners next to Tower Bridge. Gardens have been created on the decks of many of the barges, like a floating garden square.

Deptford is a lively area, rich in history with a vibrant atmosphere. Deptford and the docks are associated with Sir Francis Drake, the legend of Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain James Cook's third voyage aboard Resolution, but the local history in the 20th century is mainly a story of economic decline. Today the city has been rigenerated as a creative hub for a "radical community of arts and music", including the Laban Dance Centre designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and the Art in Perpetuity Trust (APT) gallery and studio space between others.

A forgotten history, the roots of the Marxism have a long history in a financial hub like London. Beginning with Karl Mark that wrote here the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. In 1849 Marx moved to London, to begin the "long, sleepless night of exile" that was to last for the rest of his life until his death on 1883, when was buried at Highgate Cemetery. Marx spent most of the first years in London in Soho, and during the 1850 his family lived in poverty in the Soho quarter of London, with the economic help of Engels but gradually Marx emerged from his political and spiritual isolation, producing his most important work, 'Das Kapital'. While living in Dean Street, Marx and Engels gave lectures in a room above the Red Lion pub on Great Windmill Street. Here they wrote an action programme for The Communist League published in 1848 as the Communist Manifesto, which 70 years later was the basis for the Russian Revolution. His leader, Vladimir Ilic Ulianov, Lenin, came to London six times spending a lot of time at the British Library, where for the first time he got access to Karl Marx's works. Lenin first arrived in London in 1902, living on Percy Circus not far from Clerkenwell Green, a neigborough historically associated with radicalism. Lenin published the revolutionary newspaper Iskra at the British Social Democratic Federation seat in Clerkenwell Green, where in 1933 was founded the Marx Memorial Library. The library contains a room that was Lenin's office, several busts of Lenin brought by delegations from the Soviet Union, and a mural showing a worker breaking shaking the whole world surrounded by Lenin, Marx and Engels.

LONDON SOUTH, SOUTH EAST, ALONG THE "NEW" THAMES RIVER The city moves south-east, beacause Thames is not only a river, it's a twenty years of whirling history, from Roman Londinium to the storeroom/warehouse of the British Empire's where ships freight with slaves, sugar cane and Caribbean rum shored. Than the river was almost forgotten by the city, till a decade ago when it become a sparkling icon of the city's new look. That is always moving down south and east, from the cultural centers of South Bank to the glass and steel towers of Canary Wharf, the dock's new geographic and ideologic heart.

London, the religious architecture reflect the history of a multicultural empire, with centres of worship for a multitude of faiths. The largest religious groupings are Christians (58.2 per cent), but Islam is London's largest minority religion and in England, 40% of Muslims live in London, mainly concentrated in the east London boroughs. London Central Mosque is a well-known landmark on the edge of Regent's Park, and there are many other mosques in the city. Over half of the UK's Hindu population live in London, where the Hindu temple at Neasden was the largest Hindu temple in Europe before the Shri Venkateswara of Tividale. The long history of Jews in London begins with the first Jews arriving in 1657 and Bevis Marks Synagogue built in 1701 is the oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom still in use. In 1899 the maps showed a predominantly Jewish population in the areas of Whitechapel, Spitalfields and Mile End, today predominantly populated by Muslims.