London's Distinctive Neighborhoods

伦敦几个独具一格的街坊(2/3)

London’s Distinctive Neighborhoods

Seven London neighborhoods retain history and individuality

Kew: beauty and science

The well-tended Royal Botanic Gardens lies at the junction of science and scenery. It’s both botany’s bank (with seeds of 14,098 species on deposit) and a seasonally changing palette of flowers and exotic plants.

Fifteen miles of paths wind through the grounds. Most visitors navigate by landmarks such as the 10-story Pagoda and the modern Princess of Wales Conservatory, a glass box containing 10 computer-controlled environments. Or, they stalk “celebrities” such as the Temperate House’s Chilean wine palm, started from a seed in 1846 and now considered the world’s largest indoor plant.

Dulwich: great art

Time was, you had to own art to see it. Dulwich (DULL-itch) changed that. England’s first public art gallery opened here in 1817. The Dulwich Picture Gallery contains art fit for a king: Poland’s King Stanislaus. The art was gathered for him by two London dealers, who were stuck with the collection when the monarch lost his throne in 1795 and defaulted on the deal. When England refused to buy the art, the men left it to Dulwich College. The collection includes 17th-and 18-century treasures by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Murillo, Poussin, Rubens, Gainsborough, Tiepolo and Canaletto.

Highgate: grave matters

This is a lively pace, but it isn’t the life of Highgate that fascinates visitors. It’s the dead. The 37 acres of east and west Highgate Cemetery, London’s most famous dead end, are a spooky welter of tens of thousands of graves. The west area, opened in 1839, is maze of mausoleums and crypts. The more-accessible east opened in 1854. Famous bones are everywhere. In the west, permanent residents include Henry Gray of “Gray’s Anatomy,” poet Christina Rossetti and scientist Michael Faraday. Find novelist George Eliot, choirmaster William Monk who wrote “Abide With Me” and philosopher Karl Marx among those asleep in the east.

Specialized Terms

Pagoda (n) a tall religious building in Asia with man levels, each of which has a curved roof

Mausoleum (n) a building in which the bodies of dead people are buried.

Crypt (n) a room under the floor of a church where bodies are often buried

Vocabulary Focus

Junction (n) a place where things come together

Palette (n) the range of colors that an artist usually paints with

Monarch (n) 帝王

Default (v) to fail to do something, such as pay a debt, that one legally has to do

Welter (n) a large and especially badly organized number of things

Choirmaster (n) 唱诗班指挥

Discussion Question

These people’s name really drive me nuts, could anyone tell me who are they?

Extra Exercise

1. Translate the following sentence into Chinese, ‘Time was, you had to own art to see it.’

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