The Romans built a wall around the city of Londinium in around AD 200 but it fell into disrepair after the Roman occupation of Britain ended in AD 410. The city was abandoned for the next 400 years.

London was re-established inside the city walls in the 9th-century and throughout the medieval period the wall was repaired and strengthened. From the 16th-century onwards, London outgrew its ancient walls and much of it was either knocked down or covered by new buildings. The remains of the wall, hidden inside more modern buildings, were revealed after bombing in the Second World War destroyed large areas of the City of London.

Several sections of city wall have been preserved and are well worth visiting. They give a glimpse back in time to Roman and medieval London. Highlights include:

• Outside Tower Hill Underground station –  the Roman part of the wall is more than  four metres (13 feet) high
• The courtyard of the Grange City Hotel in Cooper’s Row – the windows (loop holes) used by medieval archers can still be seen
• St Alphege Gardens, Wood Street – you can see almost the full height of the medieval wall
• The churchyard of St Giles’ Cripplegate – medieval towers added to the city wall in the 13th-century are still visible
• Museum of London – two medieval towers and a section of city wall, altered in the 19th-century, stand in a garden next to the museum

You can find out more about the ancient city wall on the Museum of London website, or if you’d like to explore the remains of the wall, you can download the London Wall Walk guide.

A guest post by Meriel Jeater, of the Museum of London as part of our Visiting the Past series. More about London’s fascinating history next week.

Join Me On The Bridge London

Organised by Women for Women International, this uplifting event sees women gather on the Southbank at 10.30am for face painting and banner-making, before marching over several bridges to the Royal Festival Hall, where there will be speeches by a series of special guests. Join Me On The Bridge London is one of many identical events around the world, which raise awareness of the need for peace and equality.

Women of the World Festival at the Southbank Centre (6-10 Mar)

More than 300 speakers from around the world will take part in the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival, which boasts an impressive programme of talks, workshops, music and performances. On International Women’s Day itself, the festival offers an array of talks by inspiring women such as Sarah Brown, Julia Hobsbawm and Julie Walters, as well as debates, music and the chance to gain valuable advice in a speed mentoring session. Day tickets are £12.

Lectures in London

Whether you want to discover the health benefits of being a working mother, attend a free conference on women entrepreneurs, or  find out why women are more affected by natural disasters, there are plenty of fascinating – and often free – events taking place on 8 March. Women in science is a particular theme this year: check out Women and Science, Suffrage Science or the Stemettes 2013 Panel (7 Mar) to discover the amazing work being done by women scientists across the globe.

World of Women Film Festival (23 and 28 Mar)

Based in Australia, the World of Women (WOW) Festival has been screening the best in contemporary female short film for the past 18 years. For 2013 the UK-based Equator, which celebrates women’s creativity in all its forms, is collaborating with the WOW Festival to bring a selection of its films to London on 24 and 28 March. Films range from Kamambo, a drama about a West Papuan asylum seeker in Australia, to Distant Thunder, a comedy about marriage and death.

Social opportunities

International Women’s Day is a great incentive to meet and be inspired by other women professionals, and the women-only networking lunch at the City Business Library is a perfect opportunity to do just that. Women Rotarians can also enjoy spectacular views whilst they socialise at City Hall, where Rotary in London is staging a networking breakfast.

International Women’s Day Entertainment

There are many celebrations of women’s creativity taking place on and around International Women’s Day. You can listen to works by contemporary female composers at St Andrew’s Holborn, see a Philippine fashion show, or tickle your funny bone for charity at a comedy gala hosted by some of the world’s top women comedians (7 Mar). BFI Southbank is also hosting a special pre-release screening of Wadjda, an award-winning film by Saudia Arabia’s first female feature director.

Million Women Rise March (9 Mar)

Gathering outside Selfridges at 12pm on Saturday, the Million Women Rise March will pedestrianise Oxford Street so that thousands of women can march to Trafalgar Square for a rally at 3pm. The march protests against male violence towards women, and is the largest of its kind in Europe.

We love the lighting in this golden photo of The Monument by atmilinko. Did you know that you can climb all the way up to the top of the Monument and see the views over the City of London?

The Monument was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and celebrated the rebuilding of London after the great fire in 1666.

If you’ve taken a great photo showing London’s rich history, please share your photo with the Visit London Flickr group.

If you’ve overindulged during the Christmas festivities, why not go for a walk in the city, like Rhiaphotos who took this lovely picture in the St Dunstan in the East gardens.

The church was damaged during the Blitz and the ruins were transformed into public gardens in the 1970s.

If you take any photos of London looking lovely between Christmas and new year, don’t forget to add them to the Visit London Flickr pool.

Walking around the City of London, I’m normally too busy looking up at towering office blocks to think about what’s under my feet. But yesterday I took a tour of London’s subterranean Roman amphitheatre, and realised there’s a whole world buried beneath the city’s streets.

The monthly amphitheatre tour is led by Museum of London’s Roman Curator, Jenny Hall. Our small tour group met in the Museum of London foyer, then walked down the road to the Guildhall Art Gallery, which is built on top of the amphitheatre.

Amazingly, the ruins of the amphitheatre were only discovered in 1988, when builders were digging foundations for the new art gallery. Archaeologists had long suspected that the Roman town of Londinium had an amphitheatre. But as Hall explains, “we’d been looking outside the city wall and this amphitheatre, unusually, is inside the city wall”.

These days, the amphitheatre is six to eight metres below street level, buried under a layer of Roman rubble and rubbish. “They would knock their buildings down and also dump rubbish, so the ground level was gradually rising all the time,” says Hall.

The amphitheatre was an important building in Roman times. In its heyday, it would’ve accommodated around 6,000 people, at a time when the population of Londinium was 20,000 to 30,000.

The ruins of the 80m-wide structure have been well-preserved, and you can still see the remains of the original walls, drainage system, and even the sand that filled the arena. Sand was perfect for soaking up blood from the gruesome gladiator games, wild animal fights and executions that took place here.

In the drains, archaeologists found Roman objects including ladies’ hair pins, drinking vessels, writing tablets and lead cursings (which were used to curse people or send messages to the gods). Hall compared these objects to the litter left behind after a modern-day football match.

The Museum of London tour really brought to life the gladiators, wild animals and baying crowds that inhabited the amphitheatre in Roman times. If you want to discover this fascinating underground gem, I’d recommend booking a place on the next tour.

Museum of London tours of the Roman amphitheatre take place once a month and cost £5. Alternatively, entry to the amphitheatre is included in admission to the Guildhall Art Gallery.

In just a few hours, the City of London and London’s West End will be lit up with a fantastic light display, ready for the capital’s Christmas celebrations.

Then London will welcome a host of stars to Leicester Square, ahead of the glitzy world premiere of the new film,  Disney’s Christmas Carol.

We’ll also be trying to break the record for the largest number of people singing a Christmas carol at the same time!

And what carol will it be? You decided with our online poll (now closed). More than 1,000 of you voted, and the results are in:

• Silent Night (with 33%, 359 Votes): winner!
• O Come, All Ye Faithful (28%, 297 Votes)
• God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (13%, 135 Votes)
• Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (26%, 281 Votes)

Thanks to everyone who took part in the poll, and enjoy the celebrations tonight!