Regent's Park

Listen for a moment. Under the hum of distant traffic you can hear gravel crunching under someone's shoes, a coot calling out on the water, and the soft thud of a football on grass. Breathe in and you may catch cut lawn, damp earth, or in early summer the sweet, heavy scent of roses. This is Regent's Park. It sits only a short walk from the noise of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, yet the city feels much further away.

Before it was a park, this land was countryside. In the sixteenth century, Henry the Eighth took it as a royal hunting ground, and it was known as Marylebone Park. For a long time afterwards, much of it was leased out as farmland. Cattle grazed here and hay was cut here. At the start of the nineteenth century, the old leases came to an end. The Crown suddenly had a large stretch of open land on the edge of a growing city, and it wanted to put that land to profitable use.

The man who took on the job was the architect John Nash. His patron was the Prince Regent, who ruled on behalf of his father, King George the Third, and who later became King George the Fourth. The park takes its name from him. Nash dreamed big. He imagined a great royal summer palace inside the park, and around fifty elegant villas scattered among the trees. Each villa would sit in its own private landscape, so every owner felt they had the countryside to themselves.

Here is the first surprise. Most of that plan was never built. The palace never appeared, and only a handful of villas went up, not the dozens Nash drew. What did get built was the frame around the park. Look toward the edges and you will see long, cream-coloured terraces with columns, pediments and statues. These are the Nash terraces. From a distance they look like palaces. In fact, each one is a row of separate houses, designed to share one grand front.

That cream colour comes from stucco, a smooth plaster laid over brick and painted to look like fine stone. It was cheaper than real stone, and some people at the time mocked it. Today the effect is still persuasive, especially on the eastern side of the park, where Cumberland Terrace and Chester Terrace face the trees. When the sun is low, the facades turn almost golden. A road called the Outer Circle runs around the park and links these terraces together.

Inside the Outer Circle there is a second, smaller loop, called the Inner Circle. Within it lies Queen Mary's Gardens, named after the wife of King George the Fifth. This is the park's great rose garden, with thousands of plants in hundreds of varieties. The beds are arranged in rings and blocks, and each variety usually has a small label. From late May into the summer the colours run from deep crimson to pale apricot. Come early in the day and the scent is strongest.

Also inside the Inner Circle is something many visitors walk past without noticing — a theatre with no roof. The Open Air Theatre has staged performances here since the 1930s. Shakespeare has long been part of its programme, alongside musicals and family shows. The audience sits on steep tiers of seats facing a stage backed by real trees. As the evening light fades, the stage lights take over. Sometimes a bird joins the performance uninvited.

Now walk toward the water. The boating lake curls through the western side of the park, with small islands, willows and wooden bridges. Herons often stand very still at the edges, waiting for fish. This calm water holds a darker story. In 1867, a crowd of skaters was on the frozen lake when the ice broke. Dozens of people drowned in the freezing water. Afterwards, the lake was made much shallower, so that a disaster like that could not happen again.

The second surprise lies on the northern edge of the park, where the Regent's Canal runs past. In 1874, a barge carrying gunpowder exploded under a bridge here, destroying it. The bridge was rebuilt using the original iron columns. But the workers put the columns back facing the wrong way. You can still see deep grooves worn by the towing ropes of horse-drawn barges — on the side that faces away from the water. Londoners still call it Blow-up Bridge.

Along that same northern side is London Zoo, run by the Zoological Society of London. It opened in the late 1820s, and it was first created as a place for scientific study rather than public entertainment. Even from the park paths, you can sometimes hear it. You might catch a strange call drifting over the hedges, or see the tall outline of an aviary above the trees. If you hear something that sounds very far from London, it probably is.

The park is not only for looking. Large sports fields stretch across the northern half, and on weekends they fill with football, cricket, rugby and softball teams. Runners loop the Outer Circle. Families spread blankets across the grass. On the western edge, the golden dome of the London Central Mosque rises above the trees. Somewhere in the park stands Winfield House, the official home of the American ambassador. The park has always mixed quiet privacy with very public life.

If you have time, cross the road to the north and climb Primrose Hill. It began as part of the same old hunting ground, though today it is a separate park. From the top you look south over the green treetops of Regent's Park toward the towers of central London. On a clear evening, the view stretches across much of the city. It is a good way to understand how this green space and the city around it grew up side by side.

Before you leave, stop wherever you are standing. Look at the line of the trees, and at the pale terraces showing through gaps in the leaves. Listen again for the gravel, the birds and the distant traffic. Two centuries ago, an architect drew a palace that never existed on this ground. Instead, the land stayed open, and Londoners kept it. As you walk out through the gates, notice how quickly the city sounds return.