Monument to the Great Fire of London

[2] Its height marks its distance from the site of the shop of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor), the king's baker, where the blaze began.

[7] Text on the east side originally falsely blamed Roman Catholics for the fire ("burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction"), which prompted Alexander Pope (himself a Catholic) to say of the area: Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.

[8] The west side of the base displays a relief sculpture by Caius Gabriel Cibber, representing in allegorical form the destruction and restoration of the City of London.

The latter is personified by a languishing woman sustained by Time and Providentia; Charles II, assisted by his brother James, directs the reconstruction works surrounded by female allegories of Architecture, Imagination, Freedom, Justice and Fortitude; Envy lies powerlessly at the bottom of the scene, while Plenty and Peace watch benevolently from above.

The first Rebuilding Act, passed in 1669, stipulated that "the better to preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation", a column of either brass or stone should be set up on Fish Street Hill, on or near the site of Farynor's bakery, where the fire began.

"Commemorating – with a brazen disregard for the truth – the fact that 'London rises again ... three short years complete that which was considered the work of ages.

[a] Halfway up, he suffered a panic attack, but persevered and made it to the top, where he found it "horrid to be so monstrous a way up in the air, so far above London and all its spires".

[16] Between 1 and 2 October 2011, a Live Music Sculpture created especially for the Monument by British composer Samuel Bordoli was performed 18 times during the weekend.

[18][19] It has a central shaft meant for use as a zenith telescope and for use in gravity and pendulum experiments that connects to an underground laboratory for observers to work (accessible through a hatch in the floor of the present-day ticket booth).

[20] In a study published in 2020, researchers from Queen Mary University of London used the shaft of the monument stairwell to measure deformation in a hanging wire.

[citation needed] if the day were bright, you observed upon the house-tops, stretching far away, a long dark path; the shadow of the Monument; and turning round, the tall original was close beside you, with every hair erect upon his golden head, as if the doings of the city frightened him.