Hyde Park

Listen for a moment. Under the traffic hum from Park Lane there is a softer layer of sound. Gravel crunches under running shoes. Ducks argue on the water. Somewhere a horse's hooves strike packed sand. Hyde Park is in the centre of one of the busiest cities on Earth, yet the sky opens up here in a way it rarely does elsewhere in London. Plane trees line the paths, and the grass runs out in wide, uneven sweeps. Welcome to one of the great open spaces of the city.

This was not always a place for everyone. In 1536, King Henry the Eighth took this land from the monks of Westminster Abbey. He did not want it for walks or picnics. He wanted it for hunting. Deer ran through these fields, and the King and his courtiers rode after them. For roughly a century, the park was a royal hunting ground, fenced off from ordinary Londoners. Most of the people who lived nearby only saw it from the outside.

That changed in the seventeenth century, when King Charles the First opened the park to the public in the 1630s. It quickly became a place to be seen. Wealthy Londoners drove their carriages in slow circles, showing off their horses, their clothes and their company. That idea, the park as a stage, has never fully left. Today the performers are joggers, cyclists, dog walkers and tourists, but people still come here to watch other people.

Now look toward the long, curving body of water. This is the Serpentine, and it is not natural. In the 1730s, Queen Caroline, the wife of King George the Second, ordered the creation of a lake by damming a small river called the Westbourne. Her gardeners shaped it to look relaxed and unplanned, which was a new fashion at the time. Instead of straight canals, she wanted water that bends like a living thing. The name comes from that shape, since serpentine means curving like a snake.

Here is something many visitors miss. People swim in that lake all year, even in winter. A local swimming club has used the Serpentine for well over a century. Its members hold a race on Christmas morning, often in water that is close to freezing. If you pass by early on a cold day, you may see a few swimmers in caps walking calmly into the grey water. Most onlookers wrap their scarves a little tighter and watch.

On the southern edge of the park runs a broad sandy track called Rotten Row. The name sounds unpleasant, but its origin is uncertain. A popular story says it comes from the French phrase "route du roi", meaning the king's road, though historians are not sure. It is also often said that this was among the first roads in England to be lit at night, with oil lamps, in the late seventeenth century. Horses still use it today, and the soft surface is built for their hooves.

If you are near the south side in the late morning, watch for a flash of polished metal. Soldiers of the Household Cavalry ride out from their barracks in Knightsbridge on most days. They cross toward Horse Guards in Whitehall for the changing of the guard. Their helmets shine, their horses are black, and their breastplates catch the light. It is a strange and lovely sight: a centuries-old military ceremony moving past people eating sandwiches on the grass.

In 1851, this park held one of the most important events of the Victorian age. The Great Exhibition brought inventions, machines and crafts from around the world to London. They were shown inside the Crystal Palace, an enormous building of iron and glass designed by Joseph Paxton. Millions of visitors came. When the exhibition ended, the building was taken apart and rebuilt in south London, where it later burned down in 1936. Nothing of it stands here now. Only open grass remains where that glass hall once rose.

Now walk your mind to the northeast corner, near Marble Arch. This is Speakers' Corner. In the nineteenth century, large crowds gathered here for political protests, especially campaigns to give more men the right to vote. In 1872, a law recognised public speaking in the park. Since then, anyone can stand up here and speak about almost anything. On Sunday mornings, you may still hear preachers, debaters and hecklers arguing in the open air. Nearby, a quieter history sits under the traffic. The Tyburn gallows, where public executions took place for centuries, stood close to this spot.

The park also holds places for grief and memory. Near the Serpentine is the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, opened in 2004. It is not a tall fountain. Instead, it is a wide oval channel of pale granite, designed by the landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson. Water flows down two sides, sometimes calm, sometimes rushing over small steps and ridges. Children often take off their shoes and put their feet in. On the eastern side of the park, a different memorial stands among the trees. Fifty-two steel pillars remember the fifty-two people killed in the London bombings of 7 July 2005.

Here is another surprise. Near Victoria Gate, on the north side of the park, is a small Victorian pet cemetery. It began in the late nineteenth century, when a gatekeeper buried a family's beloved dog in his garden. Others followed. Hundreds of tiny headstones now stand close together, with names of dogs and cats carved into the stone. It is usually closed to casual visitors, but you can sometimes glimpse it through the railings. It shows a gentle, personal side of Victorian London.

At the southeastern corner, at Hyde Park Corner, the park meets grand monuments. Wellington Arch stands in the middle of the traffic. Close by is Apsley House, once the home of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Just inside the park stands a huge bronze statue of Achilles, the Greek hero. It was paid for by women of England in honour of Wellington, and it was cast from captured cannons. When it was unveiled in the 1820s, its nudity shocked many people. A fig leaf was added.

Today the park covers around 350 acres, and it joins Kensington Gardens to the west, so the green space continues further than most visitors expect. Look around you now. Notice the pale path under your feet, the shape of the water, the plane trees with their peeling, patchy bark. Kings hunted here, crowds argued here, and millions came to see the future in glass and iron. As you walk on, listen again for that softer layer of sound... and enjoy having this open sky to yourself for a while.