Notting Hill

Before it was pastel-coloured houses and Hugh Grant, Notting Hill was pig farms and race riots. The area was developed in the 1840s by James Weller Ladbroke, who envisioned a grand estate of crescents and communal gardens. The houses went up, the wealthy moved in, and then — as London's history reliably promises — they moved out again. By the 1950s, the grand terraces had been carved into bedsits and the neighbourhood had become one of London's most diverse and troubled areas.

The 1958 Notting Hill race riots, in which gangs of white youths attacked West Indian residents, were a watershed moment in British race relations. The following year, Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones organised a Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Town Hall as a direct response. By 1966, the celebration had moved outdoors to the streets of Notting Hill, and it has grown into the largest street festival in Europe, attracting around two million people each August Bank Holiday weekend.

The pastel-painted terraces that define Notting Hill's Instagram identity were actually a practical choice — landlords in the 1960s and 1970s used whatever cheap paint they could find to brighten up decaying properties. The look stuck, and as gentrification swept through from the 1980s onward, the rainbow facades became a feature rather than a symptom.

Today Notting Hill is one of London's most expensive neighbourhoods, a place where independent bookshops and vintage boutiques sit next to multimillion-pound townhouses. The community gardens hidden behind the terraced crescents — shared green spaces accessible only by residents — remain one of London's loveliest secrets, a network of private Edens in the middle of the city.