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    18 Beautiful And Weird Maps That Will Change How You Think About London

    How it was, how it is, and how it could have been.

    1. This amazing Londonist map showing the settlements in what is now London around the turn of the first millennium. Hamor Smydde, Fulanham, Brixges Tane: Sound familiar?

    2. This map showing the boroughs of London, as they were in 1895.

    3. This map, taken from this blog, showing how the population of London has exploded over the last two centuries.

    4. This map showing the damage of the Great Fire in 1666. That whole paler region by the river essentially burned to the ground.

    5. This map showing the location of every bomb dropped on London during the Blitz.

    6. This map of Sir Christopher Wren's design for rebuilding the City in the aftermath of the Great Fire.

    7. The Abercrombie Plan, a set of concentric rings of motorways proposed after the Second World War.

    8. This is what London could look like in a flood season, if it weren't for the Thames Barrier.

    9. This map showing London's ethnic diversity.

    10. This one showing the non-English languages most commonly spoken in different regions.

    11. This map showing London in context: Each coloured segment has a population the same size as the capital.

    12. This tube map from 1908, when they used to show where the lines actually went.

    13. This London Underground map designed by Harry Beck in 1931, after he realised that where the lines go is pretty much irrelevant.

    14. This map showing the bits of the "London Underground" that are, you know, underground.

    15. This map of what London would look like if Harry Beck's tube map actually showed the right shape.

    16. This map of how long you can expect to live, sorted by nearest tube station.

    17. This alternative tube map with more appropriate names for the stations.

    18. This map showing how you get the hell out of London when you have to.