Things you didn't know about... Greenwich

Greenwich Park was given the Versailles treatment
Greenwich (Royal) Park is the oldest of London's royal parks. It was stocked with deer in 1515, and their descendants still roam in the area known as The Wilderness today. In 1662, Charles II had the park landscaped in a style inspired by French gardener André le Notre, who also planned the gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

What the Dickens? Greenwich was a favoured haunt of this man of letters
Charles Dickens spent a lot of time dining, drinking and writing about Greenwich. He was a frequent customer of Greenwich's Trafalgar Tavern, famous for its whitebait.

Naval gazing in Greenwich
After becoming the first person to sail single-handed around the world in 1967, Sir Francis Chichester was knighted publicly by the Queen in Greenwich. The ceremony took place on the same spot and used the same sword with which Queen Elizabeth I had knighted Sir Francis Drake on his return from the Americas in the Golden Hind.

England's Renaissance started in Greenwich
Anne of Denmark, the wife of the Stuart king James I, commissioned the Queen's House, which lays claim to being the first true Renaissance building in England.

Why Greenwich means time for ships
Every day, a ball on the roof of the Royal Observatory rises halfway up its pole at 12.55pm, reaches the top at 12.58pm, and drops at exactly 1.00pm. The system was installed in 1833 to provide a way for ships to check their time.

Greenwich is a World Heritage Site
Maritime Greenwich was designated a World Heritage Site in 1997 by Unesco (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

Greenwich's Millennium Dome has the Eiffel Tower covered
The roof of Greenwich's O2 Arena, formerly the Millennium Dome, consists of one million sq ft of fabric, and could accommodate the Eiffel Tower lying on its side. To fill up an upside-down Dome would take 3.8 billion pints of beer.

An archbishop came to a sticky end in Greenwich
St Alfege Church in Greenwich stands on the spot where St Alfege, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was martyred by the Danes in 1012. The present church was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and built in 1714 to replace the original, which collapsed in a storm in 1710.

You can walk under the Thames at Greenwich
Designed by Sir Alexander Binnie, the Greenwich Foot Tunnel is 1,217 ft long, runs about 50 ft under the River Thames, and is lined by 200,000 glazed white tiles. It was built to enable south London residents to walk to work in the docks on the Isle of Dogs.

Greenwich Mean Time began in 1884
Greenwich Mean Time and the Greenwich Meridian were adopted as world standards in 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC. Some 41 delegates from 25 nations took part. The resolution fixing the Meridian at Greenwich was passed 22-1, with San Domingo voting against, and France and Brazil abstaining.