Sights in the area include Madame Tussaud's (incredibly popular with London visitors - as you can tell from the perpetual queues), the adjoining Planetarium, the new BBC Experience in Broadcasting House, the Wallace Collection and Sherlock Holmes' old headquarters of Baker Street. The nearest Tube stations are Regent's Park, Baker Street and Great Portland Street. Regent's Park was laid out by master architect John Nash in 1812 as a perfect setting for the neo-Classical villas loved by the upper classes. Long before that the land on which the park now lies belonged to the church - until Henry VIII seized it as a private hunting ground. Henry had a habit of that sort of thing - in fact he's responsible for most of London's parks. The ill-tempered king would have been amazed (and possibly outraged) to learn that he was acting as a future public benefactor! While exploring this lovely piece of London green, don't miss Cumberland Terrace on the park's eastern edge, a neo-Classical masterpiece. From a distance, some of the houses look like white-sugar decorations for a wedding cake. The Inner Circle and Queen Mary's Gardens make for pleasant wandering. The Boating Lake with its loud and argumentative residents (a large collection of water birds) is an enchanting warm-weather idyll and the Open Air Theatre puts on twilight Shakespearean performances in the summer months. When performed on a midsummer night, A Midsummer Night's Dream is as dreamlike as you could ever wish. Elsewhere in the park, not far away, you can catch glimpses of London Central Mosque, with it's great shining dome and minaret. The mosque, completed in 1978, no longer seems incongruous - it has blended into its surroundings, reflecting modern London's diversity. You can visit it if you like, but visitors must remove their shoes and women should cover their heads. There's a separate gallery for women.
