The smell of stale cigarettes and the three-pint working lunch may be long gone, but drinking has never fallen out of fashion in the City of London, the financial district of one of the world’s most exhilarating cities.
There are still dozens of pubs in the so-called Square Mile that are worth stepping into for their historic roots, evocative interiors or buzzing atmosphere.
Some of the pubs on this list go back centuries, and it is not hard to imagine Shakespeare or Dickens supping a tankard of ale in one of the older establishments. The Jamaica Wine House, for example, was originally a coffee house, almost 400 years ago, whose customers included the diarist Samuel Pepys.