DISCOVERING LONDON!
SO MANY GAMES TO PLAY ON THE STREETS OF LONDON!
THE MAP
With this map, you can do more than see what the city looks like and where its monuments are: you can test your observation skills! Remove all the brownish monuments from the board, find them on the map, and put each one in its place. Did you find them all? Now search the streets for the other details listed on the poster and the things the pieces and tokens represent. Have your friends or family play too. Who will explore the whole city fastest?
THE GAME
HOW TO PLAY
To reach BIG BEN first, you and the other players will have to overcome many obstacles. But by following the instructions below the game board and reading the trivia on the next few pages, the journey will be a jolly good time!
THE TOKENS AND PIECES
Before you start playing, however, collect all the TOKENS to place on the board and assemble the PIECES and the special DIE. Roll the die and then move the number of spaces that is facing upward.
THE CITY'S ICONIC MONUMENTS
Create your own LONDON by adding the bases to the city's iconic monuments and discover their history within the pages of this booklet.
LET'S START THE JOURNEY!
WHAT DO THE TOKENS AND PIECES REPRESENT? LET'S FIND OUT TOGETHER.
SPECIAL CHALLENGE TOKENS
The GREAT BELL (the one known as Big Ben) broke shortly after its installation. It was repaired with a metal patch that gave it a truly distinctive sound.
AFTERNOON TEA in Britain is a real tradition. Each steaming cup is served with milk and pastries called scones, with cream and jam, and small sandwiches.
The RAIN is certainly no surprise in London! It’s so common that talking about the weather is a traditional way to break the ice between strangers.
DRAMA MASKS remind us that William Shakespeare, the famous playwright and author of such works as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, once lived in this very city.
They call him SIR RAVEN, or Goodman Crow. He’s one of the famous ravens of the Tower of London. The birds are held in such high regard that they have their own special caretaker, the Ravenmaster!
In addition to the ancient volumes housed in an amazing six-story glass tower, the BRITISH LIBRARY holds copies of all the books published in the UK!
THE PIECES
The NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM is home to 70 million artifacts, including the skeleton of a giant T. rex!
No detective is smarter than SHERLOCK HOLMES, the famous detective invented by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. Choose this piece if solving mysteries is your forte.
At PADDINGTON station, on platform number 1, there’s a statue of the adorable teddy bear in the hat, the protagonist of Michael Bond's book.
The KING'S GUARDS wear huge hats that were designed to make them look taller in battle. Choose this piece if you feel ready to face your opponents.
Want to know if the king is home? Look and see which flag is flying over BUCKINGHAM PALACE! If it’s the royal banner, then the king is in his castle; if it’s the English flag, the king is away.
The LONDON UNDERGROUND, colloquially called the Tube, is almost 200 years old, making it the oldest subway in the world! Each of the eleven metro lines has been assigned a color, from brown to turquoise.
The ROUTEMASTER is one of the symbols of London. This red double-decker bus is the perfect piece if you want to get ahead of your opponents in the race to Big Ben!
All it takes is a little magic and MARY POPPINS, the nanny created by author Pamela Lyndon Travers, to fly you across the board to victory!
YOUR LONDON
Before you start composing your London, let's take a look at the monuments you’ll see and learn all about their incredible history. Let’s start with the most famous symbol of the city: Big Ben.
Contrary to what many people believe, BIG BEN isn’t the name of the clock tower next to the Palace of Westminster. Instead, it’s one of its five bells, the largest of them all.
Although a master clockmaker checks that the clock in the tower marks the correct time, over the years some unpredictable events have caused a few delays!
Big Ben
Tower Bridge
As you stroll through central London, you might notice a beautiful bridge that is slowly opened and raised. That’s TOWER BRIDGE! In addition to the impressive towers placed on each side, it has a special mechanism that lifts the lower span to let large boats pass. To do so, it takes only 90 seconds!
London Eye
Want to see the city from above? Just head to the LONDON EYE, one of the world's tallest Ferris wheels! The capsules of the London Eye are numbered from 1 to 33, but there are actually only 32: number 13 is missing on account of it being an unlucky number.
British Museum
The BRITISH MUSEUM is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. Housed in a building resembling a giant Greek temple, it has more than 8 million artifacts that tell the story of humankind, starting from our distant past. It was Sir Hans Sloane, an 18th-century British doctor and naturalist, who started the museum: in fact, he left his incredible collection of curious objects to England upon his death.
Tower of London
Throughout its 900-year history, TOWER OF LONDON has been a royal palace, an arsenal (that is, a weapons warehouse), and even a prison. Today it welcomes visitors who want to discover its secrets and admire the fabulous Crown Jewels.
Buckingham Palace
The residence of England's King CHARLES III is a palace surrounded by a park the size of 20 soccer fields. It has 775 rooms and 78 bathrooms!
What is happening in front of its gates? It's the changing of the guards, when a new group of sentries comes on duty. You can recognize the guards immediately by their red coats and distinctive, huge bear fur hats.
Trafalgar Square
The first thing you notice when arriving at TRAFALGAR SQUARE is the column dedicated to Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died in the famous Battle of Trafalgar. Fun fact: this monument is as tall as 10 giraffes placed one on top of the other!
Natural History Museum
The NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM houses one of the world's largest natural history collections. It was built between 1873 and 1880 to welcome a large collection of skeletons, fossils, and plants that until then were part of the British Museum. Today, more than 70 million artifacts are stored there, divided into collections of animals, plants, rocks, and fossils from all over the world. The entrance hall is dominated by the giant skeleton of a blue whale, who has been named Hope.
St. Paul's Cathedral
One of the largest churches in the world, certainly the largest in Britain, ST. PAUL'S is immediately recognizable among London's monuments by its very large dome. Less well known, though equally impressive, is the large underground crypt that extends beneath the entire structure. In the crypt, you can see the mighty pillars that support most of the weight of the church above.
The Gherkin
In recent years, the city's skyline has changed. Next to the classic silhouettes of Big Ben and Tower Bridge, a huge “pickle” has cropped up. Creative Londoners have indeed named this skyscraper THE GHERKIN, a sort of small cucumber. They've come up with some odd nicknames for other local skyscrapers around town too: the "Cheesegrater," the "Shard," and the "Walkie-Talkie"!
