Westminster Abbey

3,300 bodies lie beneath your feet right now. That's more than triple the population of some medieval villages, all packed into Westminster Abbey's ancient stones and cloisters here at Dean's Yard. You're standing before what antiquarian John Leland called "orbis miraculum" – the wonder of the world – and he wasn't talking about the whole abbey, just that stunning Henry VII Chapel jutting out to your right with its gravity-defying fan vaulting. Before this Gothic masterpiece rose in 1245, Benedictine monks worshipped on a simple Saxon church built over what locals believed was a sacred fishing spot where St. Peter himself appeared. Now look at those towering twin towers – they're actually the newest part, added in the 1700s, while Edward the Confessor's actual bones still rest in that golden shrine behind the high altar inside. Here's what most tourists miss: every single English and British monarch since William the Conqueror has been crowned inside these walls. That's 40 coronations and counting, making this the ultimate power address in Britain. As you step through those massive oak doors, you're entering what William Morris called our "National Valhalla" – where Chaucer rubs shoulders with Darwin, and the Unknown Warrior represents millions more.