St Paul's Cathedral

Britain’s greatest masterpieces

- Sir Christopher Wren

In a view unfettered by modern skyscrapers, the skyline of St Paul’s Cathedral is as impressive as Sir Christopher Wren intended

AN inscription, Lector, si monumen-tum requiris, circumspice (Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you), in the crypt serves as a memorial to Sir Christopher Wren, who is buried there. It’s a modest epitaph in an immodest building. Not everyone is infatuated with the pomp and grandeur of London’s largest cathedral, but it works as a street spectacle.

Wren had the chance to build the only one of our cathedrals to be in the Classical style

The most exciting approach is from the end of Fleet Street as it dips into the valley of the now subterranean River Fleet, affording a suspenseful preview of one of Wren’s Baroque towers, the giant dome looming beyond. The gradient rises again up Ludgate Hill and you get a glimpse of another of the towers around a curve in the road, before the entire monumental edifice rolls into view.

Yet there are other viewing points: the angle from the south-east, favoured by photographers, offers a fine prospect of the great dome and lantern, the clouds circling above. Pleasing, too, is the walk through the north churchyard (currently partly closed for construction work), taking in the beautiful stone carvings, by Grinling Gibbons (‘Sculpting reality’, June 9) and other masons, around the windows.