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History
At the time of the Roman occupation of Britain in the 1st century AD, London was already a town of great importance, although not an administrative centre. In the 9th century King Alfred made London the capital of his kingdom. After William the Conqueror established himself in England, he began construction of the Tower of London, intending it as a citadel to control the masses. Many Normans settled in London and built imposing edifices. The wooden London Bridge was torn down in 1176 and rebuilt with stone. The new structure, completed in 1209, with 20 arches and a drawbridge, was in service until early in the 19th century, when it was replaced by a new bridge. The old bridge was moved to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, in 1971.
Throughout the Middle Ages the development of London was slow and was repeatedly arrested by wars, epidemics, and commercial crises. The opening by Queen Elizabeth I of the Royal Exchange in 1566 marked the growth of the city in world importance. The queen, however, feared that if the city expanded it might become too powerful, constituting a threat to her royal authority; she therefore issued (1580) a proclamation prohibiting the construction of any new building within a radius of 4.8 km (3 miles) outside the city gates. It proved impossible, however, to fix London\'s expansion by decree, and the growth of the city was hardly checked even by the natural disasters, political agitation, and civil wars that marked the succeeding era of the Stuart monarchs.
In 1665, during the Great Plague, nearly 70,000 Londoners died from the disease within a period of a year. The epidemic was followed by the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed most of the walled section of the city. Because the Rebuilding Act of 1667 constituted that only stone and brick be used, the new buildings that rose from the ruins formed little similarity to the odd wooden dwellings of old London. The walls and gates of the city, among the last rests of the medieval town, were demolished in the 1760s. During the 19th century many suburbs were incorporated into Greater London, all the bridges in the city were rebuilt in stone, and the streets were equipped first with gas, and later with electric, illumination.
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Celý referát London