the.com/square mile
London's financial core, where bowler hats died but the money never stopped talking.
means A nickname for the City of London, the small historic square-mile district that functions as Britain's financial district and operates as its own ceremonial county within London.
from Simply descriptive — the City of London's ancient boundaries enclose an area of almost exactly one square mile, a footprint set by the old Roman and medieval walled city that never expanded as London grew up around it. The name stuck as shorthand the way 'Wall Street' or 'Fleet Street' did: a place-name standing in for the institutions packed inside it, even as the actual financial activity long ago spilled out into Canary Wharf and beyond.
- actual size
- 1.12 square miles, not one
- official name
- the City of London, not a borough
- own police force
- separate from the Metropolitan Police
- ancient roots
- boundaries trace back to Roman Londinium