When the halls empty
A day at a Barbican Centre conference ends the same way for nearly everybody. The sessions close at around five, the halls empty onto the foyers and the lakeside, and several hundred people who have been sitting since nine set off for the same two stations at the same moment. By a quarter past, the walk down to Moorgate is shoulder to shoulder with the office crowd leaving the towers along London Wall.
There is no need to join it. The Barbican sits on the northern edge of the City with Clerkenwell and Smithfield to its west, St Paul's to its south and Shoreditch a short walk to the north east, and the raised walkways threading through the estate will carry you towards most of them without touching a busy road. Give the crowd forty minutes to clear and the stations are quiet again in any case.
The building deserves a few of those minutes. The arts centre opened in 1982 as the final part of the Barbican Estate, designed by the architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon on ground laid waste in the Blitz, and it is still home to the London Symphony Orchestra. The conference rooms are the part most visitors see; the concert hall, the theatre, the cinemas and the glasshouse conservatory high in the building are the parts worth coming back for.
Reading the highwalks
The estate is famous for being hard to navigate, and the reputation is earned. Walkways cross at different levels, staircases appear without warning, and several routes that look direct end at a residents' door. A yellow line painted on the ground leads to the arts centre from the streets and stations around it, and following it in reverse is the most reliable way back out.
Before leaving, walk down to the lakeside. The three residential towers rise above the water, the terraces step down to meet it, and the church of St Giles Cripplegate sits in the middle of all that concrete looking faintly surprised to be there. It is a medieval church that escaped the Great Fire and was badly damaged in the Blitz. John Milton is buried inside, and Oliver Cromwell was married there.
Near the church, a stretch of the old City wall still stands beside the water, medieval stonework raised on Roman foundations. It is one of the few places where the line of the wall is easy to picture, and at dusk, with the tower windows lit above it, it makes an odd and memorable first stop.
West to Smithfield
Ten minutes west along Long Lane brings you to Smithfield, where the Victorian market halls still dominate the streets and the meat trade has worked through the night for generations. The evening belongs to the restaurants and pubs around the market's edges, many of them in old warehouses, and to St John Street as it runs north into Clerkenwell.
Two quieter stops sit on the way. The church of St Bartholomew the Great, entered through a small timber framed gatehouse on the edge of the market, was founded in 1123 and is one of the oldest churches in London; its Norman interior is dark and extraordinary. Just to the north, Charterhouse Square opens behind its railings, with the old Carthusian priory beyond it that has housed an almshouse since the early seventeenth century.
St John, the restaurant in a former smokehouse on St John Street, has been the best known table in the area since the 1990s and remains the obvious choice for anyone who wants plain, serious cooking without ceremony. There are plenty of others around the market, and the desk will name one that suits the hour if you ask when you write.
South to St Paul's and the river
The highwalks run south towards London Wall and Wood Street, and from there it is a short walk down to St Paul's Cathedral. On the way, Postman's Park is worth the detour: a small garden off King Edward Street that holds the Watts Memorial, a wall of ceramic tablets recording ordinary people who died saving the lives of others. It is one of the most affecting few square yards in London, and almost nobody coming out of a conference knows it is there.
The cathedral is floodlit after dark and its steps are quiet once the tourists have gone. Beyond it, the Millennium Bridge crosses to Bankside, with Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe on the far bank and a string of places to eat along the river. It is the simplest way to put a whole river between yourself and the working day, and it is well under half an hour from the Barbican on foot.
The other direction entirely, Shoreditch begins about fifteen minutes' walk to the north east past Finsbury Square and stays awake later than anywhere else near the City. The note on Threadneedles covers the quieter end of EC2 around Bank, for delegates staying close to the junction.
Conference weeks, and a work evening
Most conferences carry a dinner on one of their evenings, and a surprising number of delegates find that the dinner is the part of the week that matters. If yours is a table of colleagues or clients, a work evening exists for exactly that: a companion who walks into a room whose rules were set before she got there, is easy to introduce and takes no interest whatsoever in anybody's business.
A dinner with speeches fits inside three hours at £700. A reception, then the dinner, then the bar want four hours at £900, and that last hour is usually what turns an obligation into an evening. Tell the desk who is at the table, how formal the room is and what you would rather not have discussed, and that briefing is passed on in full before she arrives.
Conference weeks fill early across the City of London, because every hotel between the Barbican and Liverpool Street is taking the same delegates. Write as soon as the dinner is in your own diary rather than on the afternoon itself. An ordinary weekday evening, by contrast, can usually be arranged within a few hours.
Companions who know this end of the City
Violetta is the desk's first answer here. The Barbican is her building, she knows which lift saves five minutes, and her idea of an evening here is a concert in the main hall followed by the highwalks after dark, when they are completely empty. She is 178 cm, sleek and dark haired, and unbothered by any room she walks into.
Sonya is the other natural choice: early thirties, calm, at home in the older rooms of the City and happiest on the cathedral steps once the square mile has gone quiet. Both women appear on the thirties and beyond list, which is worth reading if you would like someone who has sat through a good many work dinners and still enjoys them. For a table crowded with bankers, Samanta is entirely at ease and says so herself.
Whoever you choose, the written confirmation sets out the hour, length, address and figure, and the fee passes to her in person at the moment she arrives, ahead of the evening itself. Bank and Monument, ten minutes south, has its own page for guests staying nearer the junction.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the brunettes list in by request.