Four geographical areas are rotated on a weekly basis: The Square Mile, Edges of the City, Westminster and Docklands. The tour guides, all of whom are architects, architectural writers or architectural historians, have an in-depth knowledge of London, enabling them to provide an intelligent but accessible commentary to the tours. The tours started about fifteen years ago and have been running on the same basis ever since. Please note that a coach is used to get you to the key destinations, with some walking in-between.

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Tour A: The Square Mile

London's historic core: a hugely impressive mix of history and modernity whose dedication to financial services belies an architectural richness of new buidlings populating an historic street pattern that goes back to the middle ages. This is a place where history and modernity nestle together, where new office buildings accommodate themselves to former churchyards and the principal streets have a network of backlands and alleys of restaurants and bars. Its focal points are Bank - where there is not only the Bank of England, but significant architectural names all around - and St Paul's cathedral, London's most salient and important landmark. But around the City's expanding edges are a mix of new developments that illustrate the variety of modern British architecture.

Tour B: Edges of the City

Beginning with recent developments alongside the river in Southwark such as Palestra and the Unicorn Theatre, this tour moves on to discover some of the exciting buildings that have helped to regenerate this part of east London. It explores buildings as diverse as Adjaye Asociate's Idea Store and Dirty House to Alsop Architects' Institute of Cell & Molecular Science, and shows how some of the most innovative architectural development are taking place just outside the City boundaries.

Tour C: Westminster - Power & Culture

Westminster - a contrast to the City and the historic home of the monarchy (at Buckingham and other palaces), the government and the civil service (in Whitehall and Victoria), and of the established church (at Westminster Abbey). It comprises a series of former aristocratic estates that were largely developed between the late 17th and early 18th centuries into the orderly London squares and terraces with which one is familiar. But this is also London's shopping and theatre heartland, an area with discrete districts such as Soho, Covent Garden and Mayfair. It also includes London's only significant attempt at a formal urban route: John Nash's 'royal Mile' between the Mall and the Regent's Park. But while there is a rich historic basis to the West End it is here that one can also find modern architecture such as Rogers' Channel Four building, Lasdun's Royal College of Physicians, works by Hopkins, Foster, modern work at galleries and much more.

Tour D: Docklands

An introduction to the architectural geography of one of Europe's largest regeneration projects: the scene of 35 years of activity, centred around the gloriously islanded focal point of Canary Wharf. This is London's historic East End, transformed in recent years into a vibrant place of new homes and work places, many of them related to the former docks and the River Thames. It is also London's future: the city end of a huge swathe of territory reaching out toward the Thames Estuary called the Thames Gateway, future home of the 2012 Olympic Games and thousands of new homes.