Explore the real-world places that appear in Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Covent Garden Piazza, The Folly — Nightingale's Home, Actors' Church — St Paul's Covent Garden, The Punch and Judy Pub, The Thames at Waterloo Bridge and 10 more.
Covent Garden, WC2 — Where Peter Grant meets his first ghost
It is in Covent Garden that probationary constable Peter Grant, standing watch over a murder scene, takes a witness statement from Nicholas Wallpenny — a ghost who has been dead since the eighteenth century. This seemingly routine interview with the deceased launches Peter into the world of magic and the supernatural. The encounter brings him to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, who immediately recognises Peter's rare ability to perceive and interact with the uncanny, setting the entire plot in motion.
Covent Garden was London's principal fruit and vegetable market from the 1650s until 1974, when the market relocated to Nine Elms. The magnificent iron-and-glass market building was designed by Charles Fowler and completed in 1830. The surrounding piazza, originally laid out by Inigo Jones in the 1630s, is one of the oldest planned public spaces in London.
The former market building now houses boutique shops, restaurants, and the London Transport Museum. The piazza remains one of London's busiest tourist destinations, famous for its street performers and the Royal Opera House on its northeastern edge. The ghost of Nicholas Wallpenny, presumably, is still lurking somewhere among the crowds.
Visit: Covent Garden Piazza (landmark)
Russell Square area, Bloomsbury, WC1 — Headquarters of the Wizarding Police
The Folly is the grand Bloomsbury townhouse that serves as the official headquarters of the Metropolitan Police's Special Assessment Unit — in practice, the home of Inspector Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, and soon of Peter Grant, his first apprentice in fifty years. Peter moves into the Folly and begins his magical education here, learning Latin, practising formae, and discovering the building's enormous library of arcane texts. The house is maintained by Molly, the eerily silent and unnervingly sharp-toothed housekeeper whose own nature is never quite explained.
Bloomsbury was developed as an affluent residential district in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becoming famous as a hub of intellectual and bohemian life — home to the British Museum and the University of London. Its grand Georgian and Victorian terraces attracted writers, scholars, and eccentrics for centuries.
Bloomsbury remains one of central London's most elegant districts, dotted with garden squares, university buildings, and the British Museum. While the Folly itself is fictional, the real townhouses of the area — particularly around Russell Square and Montague Street — perfectly match Aaronovitch's description of its imposing Victorian facade.
Bedford Street, Covent Garden, WC2 — Scene of early supernatural violence
St Paul's Covent Garden, known as the Actors' Church, features in the early investigation as Peter and Nightingale trace the supernatural entity — the malevolent Faceless Man, or spirit of riot — through the theatre district. The church's long association with performers and its proximity to the opening murder scene makes it a significant landmark in Peter's developing understanding of London's hidden geography of power and history.
St Paul's Covent Garden was designed by Inigo Jones and completed in 1633, making it one of the first wholly new churches built in London since the Reformation. It became known as the Actors' Church owing to its proximity to the Theatre Royal and the many performers buried or commemorated within its walls, including Ellen Terry and Charlie Chaplin's father.
St Paul's Covent Garden remains an active church and a significant heritage site, open to visitors. It continues to host memorials for figures from the performing arts and holds regular services. The portico facing the piazza is one of London's most photographed architectural features.
Visit: St Paul's Church, Covent Garden (historic site)
The Market, Covent Garden, WC2 — Theatrical London underworld
The theatrical and bohemian milieu of Covent Garden pubs forms the social backdrop against which Peter investigates the strange possessions and violent outbursts linked to the malevolent spirit. The area's pubs are frequented by the actors, stagehands, and street performers whose world intersects with the supernatural disturbances. Peter's growing understanding of London's cultural geography — the way the city's past bleeds into its present — is sharpened by time spent in establishments like this one.
The Punch and Judy pub takes its name from the traditional puppet show that has been performed in Covent Garden since the seventeenth century — famously recorded by Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1662. The pub occupies a first-floor position overlooking the piazza, part of the Victorian market building.
The Punch and Judy remains a popular pub above Covent Garden Market, offering views over the piazza. It retains its Victorian character and is a favourite with tourists and locals alike. Traditional Punch and Judy shows are still performed in the piazza below, particularly during the May Fayre festival each year.
Visit: Punch & Judy Pub (restaurant)
Waterloo Bridge, SE1/WC2 — Meeting place of Father Thames
The Thames and its divine embodiments — Father Thames and Mother Thames — are central supernatural presences in the novel. Peter is tasked by Nightingale with negotiating a truce between these rival river deities, whose territorial dispute is entangled with the broader supernatural chaos afflicting London. Waterloo Bridge, spanning the river at the heart of the city, represents the contested boundary between their domains and serves as a key site in Peter's attempts to broker peace between ancient forces.
The current Waterloo Bridge was built between 1937 and 1945, replacing John Rennie's earlier neoclassical bridge of 1817. It was largely constructed by women during the Second World War due to the shortage of male labour, earning it the informal nickname 'Ladies' Bridge'. The bridge offers some of the finest views of central London.
Waterloo Bridge remains one of the busiest bridges in London, carrying six lanes of traffic and wide pedestrian walkways. The views from the bridge — taking in St Paul's Cathedral, the Tate Modern, Somerset House, and the Houses of Parliament — are among the most celebrated in the city. The South Bank arts complex, including the National Theatre and BFI, lies at its southern foot.
Visit: Waterloo Bridge (landmark)
Strand, WC2 — Riverside landmark and arcane geography
Somerset House sits on the north bank of the Thames at a point of deep historical significance in the novel's supernatural cartography of London. Its grand neoclassical courtyard and riverside terrace feature in Peter's investigations as he maps the hidden layers of the city — the way ancient powers have shaped the modern metropolis. The building's long history as a seat of government and record-keeping mirrors the Folly's role as a repository of arcane knowledge.
The current Somerset House was built between 1776 and 1801 to designs by William Chambers, replacing an earlier Tudor palace. For most of its history it housed government offices including the General Register Office of births, marriages and deaths. It sits on the site where the River Strand once ran into the Thames before being buried.
Somerset House is now a major arts and cultural centre, housing galleries, restaurants, and event spaces. The courtyard hosts an ice rink in winter and open-air cinema in summer. The Courtauld Gallery, containing one of Britain's finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, is located within the building.
Visit: Somerset House (museum)
Charing Cross Road, WC2 — Transit corridor of the investigation
Charing Cross Road forms part of the physical and symbolic geography Peter traverses as he investigates the supernatural disturbances spreading through central London. The street's famous bookshops are a fitting backdrop for a young detective-wizard who spends much of his time in libraries, both mundane and arcane. The road connects the theatrical world of the West End with the scholarly precincts of Soho and Bloomsbury, mirroring Peter's dual existence in the worlds of conventional policing and magic.
Charing Cross Road was created in the 1880s as part of a major slum-clearance scheme, cutting through the tangle of streets between St Giles and St Martin's Lane. It quickly became famous for its concentration of second-hand and specialist bookshops, most famously celebrated in Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road. The street also became the heart of London's music industry in the twentieth century.
Charing Cross Road retains some of its bookshop character, though many shops have closed in recent decades. Foyles, one of London's largest and most celebrated bookshops, remains a landmark on the street. The road is a major bus and pedestrian route connecting Trafalgar Square to Oxford Street.
Visit: Foyles Bookshop (landmark)
Purley, Croydon — Nest of vampires
Peter's synopsis of his new magical responsibilities includes a memorably deadpan reference to dealing with 'nests of vampires in Purley' — one of the novel's running jokes about the banality of the supernatural set against the utterly ordinary suburban landscape of outer South London. The contrast between the gothic horror implied by a vampire nest and the sleepy respectability of Purley encapsulates Aaronovitch's comic sensibility and his vision of a Britain where magic is mundane and paperwork still has to be filed.
Purley developed as a residential suburb in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries following the arrival of the railway. It became a byword for comfortable, conservative suburban life — precisely the kind of setting that makes the idea of vampire nests simultaneously absurd and unsettling. The area was largely developed by the London and Brighton Railway from the 1840s onward.
Purley remains a quiet residential suburb in the London Borough of Croydon, characterised by detached Edwardian and interwar houses, golf clubs, and commuter connections to central London. It is the kind of place where a vampire nest would be very difficult to explain to the Neighbourhood Watch.
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, WC1 — Repository of arcane history
The British Museum looms over the novel's Bloomsbury setting, its vast collections of ancient artefacts providing an implicit backdrop to Peter's magical education at the nearby Folly. The museum's holdings — encompassing objects from every civilisation that ever practised ritual, sacrifice, or invocation — represent exactly the kind of accumulated arcane residue that Nightingale's world acknowledges and the mundane world ignores. Peter's growing awareness of London's hidden history is shaped in part by proximity to this repository of the human past.
The British Museum was founded in 1753 and is the world's first national public museum. Its current building, designed by Robert Smirke, was constructed between 1823 and 1852. The Great Court, enclosed under a spectacular glass roof designed by Norman Foster, was added in 2000. The museum's collections number over eight million objects.
The British Museum remains one of the world's great museums and London's most visited attraction. Admission to the permanent collection is free. The museum is particularly celebrated for its collections of Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman sculpture, and prehistoric European artefacts — the kinds of objects that, in Aaronovitch's universe, might well carry a vestigium or two.
Visit: The British Museum (museum)
Leyton, East London, E10 — Peter's origins
Leyton in East London is where Peter Grant grew up, the son of a jazz musician father and a Sierra Leonean mother. His background — mixed-race, working-class, East London — is central to his character and his perspective on the city he polices. Aaronovitch uses Peter's origins to ground the supernatural narrative in a very specific and authentically observed social reality, contrasting the grand eccentricity of the Folly and its aristocratic magical tradition with the diverse, contemporary London that Peter actually knows and loves.
Leyton was a rural Essex village until absorbed by the expansion of East London in the late nineteenth century. Its development as a working-class suburb was driven by the arrival of the Great Eastern Railway and then the London Underground. The area has historically had a diverse population, particularly from the West Indian and West African communities who settled in East London from the 1950s onward.
Leyton is part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The area has undergone significant regeneration following the 2012 Olympics, which were centred on nearby Stratford. It remains a diverse, predominantly working-class and lower-middle-class area with a strong community character and improving transport links.
Oxford Street, W1 — Scene of riot and supernatural violence
Oxford Street becomes a site of terrifying supernatural violence as the malevolent spirit — the entity Peter comes to understand as Mr Punch, or the embodiment of riot — possesses ordinary Londoners and drives them to acts of spectacular brutality. The street's role as the beating commercial heart of the city makes the eruptions of violence here particularly shocking. Peter and Lesley May are drawn to the area as the possessions escalate, and Lesley herself suffers a catastrophic and disfiguring attack linked to the spirit's power.
Oxford Street has been a major London thoroughfare since Roman times, when it formed part of a road running from Hampshire to Colchester. By the eighteenth century it was lined with shops, and by the twentieth century it had become Europe's busiest shopping street. The street was badly damaged during the Blitz and has been repeatedly redeveloped since.
Oxford Street remains one of the world's most visited shopping streets, though it has faced significant challenges from online retail and changing consumer habits. Major department stores including Selfridges and John Lewis anchor the street. Westminster City Council has long debated pedestrianising sections of the road.
Visit: Oxford Street (landmark)
Twickenham, Richmond upon Thames — Domain of Father Thames
The upper Thames, in the stretch around Twickenham and the riverside villages of west London, is the domain of Father Thames — the ancient, elemental god of the river in his older, more rural aspect. Peter is sent to negotiate with this formidable and ancient being as part of the truce between Father Thames and his estranged consort, Mother Thames, who holds sway over the tidal river to the east. The contrast between the pastoral upper river and the industrial lower Thames mirrors the tensions between the old and new magic of the city.
Twickenham has been a fashionable riverside retreat since the seventeenth century, when poets, aristocrats, and artists built villas along the Thames here. Alexander Pope's Twickenham villa was one of the most celebrated gardens in England. The area retains much of its Georgian and Victorian riverside character, including Marble Hill House and the Orleans House Gallery.
Twickenham is best known today as the home of English rugby at Twickenham Stadium. The riverside area remains exceptionally picturesque, with pubs, gardens, and riverside walks. Marble Hill House, a Palladian villa dating from the 1720s, is open to the public through English Heritage.
Visit: Marble Hill House (historic site)
Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, E14 — The tidal river's power
The tidal Thames to the east of London is the domain of Mother Thames, a very different deity from her rural counterpart — younger, fiercer, more attuned to the industrial and commercial history of the river as it passes through the docks and trading houses of East London. The towering glass skyscrapers of Canary Wharf rise over her domain, a symbol of the city's endless reinvention. Peter's negotiations with her and her daughters — the tributary rivers of London — are among the novel's most memorable and inventive passages.
Canary Wharf takes its name from the fruit and vegetable trade that passed through the West India Docks, which opened in 1802. The docks were at the heart of London's global trading empire for 150 years before closing in 1980 due to containerisation. The massive redevelopment of the area as a financial centre began in the late 1980s.
Canary Wharf is now one of London's two major financial centres, home to the headquarters of major banks and financial institutions. The area has its own underground station and is a major transport hub. Its riverside walkways and the Museum of London Docklands, which tells the story of the Thames trade, are both open to the public.
Visit: Museum of London Docklands (museum)
Covent Garden, WC2 — Digging up graves
The synopsis explicitly references Peter 'digging up graves in Covent Garden' as one of his new supernatural duties. The churchyard of St Paul's Covent Garden — the Actors' Church — is the most significant burial ground in the immediate area, containing the graves of performers, craftsmen, and Londoners dating back to the seventeenth century. The exhumations are connected to Peter's investigation into the entity that has been possessing Londoners, as he and Nightingale attempt to trace the spirit's historical origins through the city's dead.
St Paul's churchyard has been a burial ground since the church's consecration in 1633. Burials continued here until the churchyard was closed to new interments in the Victorian era. Notable figures buried here include the woodcarver Grinling Gibbons and the painter Samuel Cooper. The churchyard has been a garden since the nineteenth century.
The churchyard of St Paul's Covent Garden is now a quiet walled garden, open to the public and offering a rare green space in the heart of the West End. The garden is maintained by the church and provides a peaceful contrast to the bustle of the surrounding piazza. Several commemorative plaques and stones remain visible.
Visit: St Paul's Church Garden, Covent Garden (park)
Notting Hill, W11 — The spirit of rebellion awakens
Notting Hill and its famous Carnival are deeply embedded in the novel's thematic concerns with riot, rebellion, and the spirit of disorder that Peter is ultimately battling. The entity's power is linked to London's history of civil unrest, and Notting Hill — site of the 1958 race riots and birthplace of the Carnival that transformed that history — is a charged presence in the novel's geography. The climax of the novel is shaped by Peter's understanding of how cities metabolise violence and turn it into culture and community.
Notting Hill was the site of violent race riots in 1958, when white mobs attacked the area's Caribbean community. In direct response, the Notting Hill Carnival was founded in 1966 by Claudia Jones, initially as an indoor event, becoming an outdoor street festival by 1966. The Carnival is now Europe's largest street festival, drawing over a million visitors each August bank holiday weekend.
Notting Hill remains one of London's most celebrated and expensive neighbourhoods. The Notting Hill Carnival continues to take place every August bank holiday, filling the streets with sound systems, masquerade bands, and food stalls. The area is also famous for Portobello Road Market, one of London's great antiques and street food markets.
Visit: Portobello Road Market (landmark)
More by Ben Aaronovitch: All Ben Aaronovitch books
More novels set in London: Browse all London books on Map A Story
Other nearby maps: The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle locations map · Patriot Games by Tom Clancy locations map · The Time Machine by H.G. Wells locations map · The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch locations map