CityLayers: London

Walk London through its layers of time.

Point your iPhone at the street and the city of another age appears around you, standing where it stood.

Coming soon to the App Store iPhone · iOS 18

Looking west down Cheapside in 1500: timber-framed houses with red tile roofs line the street, and the spire of Old St Paul's rises at the end. — London · c. 1500Cheapside

The film

Two layers of London in forty-eight seconds

Every shot recorded in the app. Score written in code.

How it works

The old city, lined up with the new one

CityLayers rebuilds each layer of London, the city at one moment in its history, and sets it down where it stood, at true scale, so the street you are on becomes the street it was.

01 · Point

Point your phone at the street

Hold your iPhone up and look along the street. CityLayers matches what the camera sees against Apple's street imagery, then the city of AD 250 or 1500 appears where it stood, lined up with today's buildings. Until it lines up, the city stays hidden, so it never appears in the wrong place.
02 · Walk

Tap to walk, from anywhere

Tap the ground to walk through the old streets, and drag to look around. It works from anywhere, even at home on the sofa, so you can cross London Bridge or climb to the forum without leaving the room.
03 · Research

Built from the evidence

Each layer is rebuilt from old maps fitted to today's streets, excavation records and written sources such as Stow's Survey of London. In the app, How we made this shows the method, the measured errors and what is still an estimate.
04 · Map

Find every place on the full map

Open the map to see the whole layer laid over today's streets: churches, gates, markets and houses, each with what stood there, what stands there now, and where the evidence comes from.

Layers

Choose a layer of London

Each layer is London at one moment, built from published archaeology and period maps, with every place cited inside the app.

London · AD 250
Londinium
The Roman town on the Thames: the forum, the amphitheatre, the bridge and the landward wall, with houses, bath-houses and fields beyond.

Price

Free with the app

Look for

The amphitheatre under Guildhall Yard, the forum at Leadenhall, the wall at Tower Hill.
London · c. 1500
The walled City and Westminster
A hundred parish churches, Old St Paul's, the bridge of houses and the palace at Westminster, out to Tyburn.

Price

£4.99 one-time in-app purchase

Places

280+ researched places

Landmarks

Old St Paul's, London Bridge, St John's Gate, the Charterhouse and the Jewel Tower, each modelled in full.

Screenshots

What you see through the phone

Walk London as it was in 1500Point your phone at the street. The old city appears where it stood.
Old St Paul's, spire and allThe longest church in England, rebuilt as it stood in 1500.
Cross the bridge of housesLondon Bridge with its shops, chapel and gate.
Stay out after duskLit windows, lamps and the evening sky.
Londinium is freeThe Roman town of AD 250: forum, amphitheatre, the wall.
Choose a layer of LondonLondon in AD 250 and c. 1500, with more layers to come.

More cities to come

London is the first city. More layers of London will open in this app, each one researched place by place before it appears, and other cities will follow as CityLayers apps of their own.

The app stays the same from layer to layer. Only the year changes.