Admiralty Arch

Admiralty Arch Review

A stately and bombastic gateway to the Mall, this is one of the city's finest set pieces. On the southwest corner of Trafalgar Square, the arch, which was named after the adjacent Royal Navy headquarters, was designed in 1908-11 by Sir Aston Webb as a two-part memorial to Queen Victoria, along the ceremonial route to Buckingham Palace; the second part is the Victoria Memorial just outside the palace. Passing under one of its five arches—two for pedestrians, two for traffic, and a central arch, opened only for state occasions—one enters the Mall (rhymes with the American pronunciation of shall). A quirky feature of the arch is its curious "nose": about 7 feet up, on the inside wall of the most northerly arch is a noselike protrusion, said to be based on the proboscis of either Wellington or Napoleon.