This walk will take us from the most recent bridge over the Thames, Millennium Bridge, to the very first one ever built, London Bridge. We will thus discover the banks of the Thames and the heterogeneous population that it has attracted: sailors, captains, artists of all sorts, famous writers and playwrights, bishops, kings and rogues. All of them came to the taverns and noisy and smoky pubs to amuse themselves, mingle with the riffraff, or dream about distant horizons. Proofs of this are Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theater, and Sir Francis Drake’s ship, the S. V. Golden Hinde, moored on St. Mary Overie Dock.
This district south of the Thames, Southwark, has become a fulcrum for contemporary art, true to its origins when actors, playwrights and writers would go there to create and perform virulent and funny plays. Today, theaters, galleries and more importantly, the magnificent Tate Modern, have taken the relay, reanimating this area long abandoned by industry.