London: City of Vision, City of Woe: A Morbid Anatomy Grand Tour with Chiara Ambrosio · October 2-6

Name: London: City of Vision, City of Woe: A Morbid Anatomy Grand Tour with Chiara Ambrosio · October 2-6
Start: 2025-10-02T12:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-10-06T15:00:00+01:00
Location: London, UK

Schedule

Thu, 02 Oct, 2025 at 12:00 pm to Mon, 06 Oct, 2025 at 03:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

London, UK | London, EN

For questions or waitlist, please email [email protected]
October 2 - 6, 2025 (Begins on the evening of October 2, ends on the afternoon of October 6)
$1,900 for single room/ $3,600 for a double occupancy / $750 Ticket without lodging
Includes 4 nights hotel (except for the non-lodging option) , 7 day travelcard for zones 1 & 2, 1 group meal, tickets to museums, concerts, screenings and all other events, and guided tours. Airfare is not included. Please note: Refunds (minus 10% processing and administrative fees) are available until July 18. After this date, only 50% of the ticket price (minus 10% processing and administrative fees) will be refunded. No refunds available after August 8. Itinerary subject to change.
Please note: This trip will include a great deal of walking and the use of public transportation & itinerary subject to change; Full and final itinerary, along with accommodation details, will be provided closer to the dates of travel.
This fall, join Morbid Anatomy for a new Grand Tour trip to stunning London, UK with filmmaker and artist Chiara Ambrosio. From the treasures hiding in the thick mud of the Thames’ riverside, to its church spires wreathed in fog, London is a mysterious, enchanted city in which a host of angels, poets, madmen, visionaries, down-and-outs, and curious seekers have paced the cobbled streets, building rafts out of dreams, scratching at the thin surface to make the invisible visible with a healthy dose of hard-headedness and idiosyncrasy.
Artist Chiara Ambrosio has called London her home for the past twenty-five years; she has explored every nook and cranny, absorbed its stories, dreams, and visions, and poured many of them into her recent feature film Raft, A London Story. This trip will introduce us to some of the magical spaces, heroes, anti-heroes and myths that make this city so deeply unique and transcendental.
Over the course of five days, we’ll share absinthe cocktails at Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, traverse obscure cemeteries and secret gardens, visit eccentric museums and legendary flea markets, and do some mudlarking, in which we comb the Thames riverbanks for treasures left by the receding tide. Under the expert guidance of artist Eleanor Crook, we’ll visit the Old Operating Theatre and Gordon’s Museum, with its exquisite 19th century anatomical waxworks. And, with archivist Ross MacFarlane, we’ll explore London’s magical history with a special walking tour featuring esoteric bookshops, mysterious archives and special collections. Along the way we’ll sample local food and drink, enjoy a performance by troubadour John Bently on a facsimile 17th century pirate ship, and much more!
FULL ITINERARY
Day 1: October 2: Arrival in London
Upon arrival in London, make your way to your assigned hotel and spend the afternoon unpacking and settling into your surroundings in this esteemed city.
Evening museum visit with cocktails: Meet up with the full group for a welcome party at Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, and enjoy cocktails while getting to know each other in its wonderful Absinthe bar!
Day 2: October 3
OLD & NEW SACRED WAYS (Reclaiming the City)
We will begin our journey on one of the many secret rooftop terraces of the City, to get a grasp of our terrain from above.
A visit to Postman’s Park: Postman’s Park is one of the secret gardens that you can find hidden around the old City of London. Just north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, it’s home to a memorial garden that celebrates ‘ordinary’ people who acted heroically. The memorial contains 54 plaques, each dedicated to an ‘ordinary’ person who did something most extraordinary: giving their life in an attempt to save another’s.
St. Dunstan in the East: The Church of St. Dunstan was originally built around 1100 and is a Grade I listed building. A new south aisle was added in 1391 and was repaired in 1631. It was severely damaged in 1666 by the Great Fire of London, and again during the Blitz of 1941. The tower and steeple designed by Sir Christopher Wren. survived the bombing. In 1967 the City of London decided to turn the remains into a public garden, which opened in 1970.
We will walk past the Monument (Fire of London) and listen to the incredible story of destruction and renewal that defines modern London, before crossing London Bridge headed for its famous Borough food market for a lunch break.
After lunch we head to the nearby Crossbones graveyard, a former post-medieval burial ground on Redcross Way in Southwark, south London, now serving as a secular shrine for outsiders and marginalized people. Believed to hold the remains of up to 15,000 individuals, it was closed in 1853. Originally, Crossbones was established as an unconsecrated cemetery for prostitutes—locally called "Winchester Geese" because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work in the Liberty of the Clink, an area outside the City of London's jurisdiction known for its brothels, theatres, and other prohibited entertainments. By the late 18th century, it became a paupers' cemetery for St. Saviour's parish. Today, Crossbones is preserved as a memorial garden and a symbol of remembrance for those excluded from traditional society.
A visit to the Old Operating Theatre: Housed in the attic of the early eighteenth-century church withinof the Old St. Thomas’ Hospital, this atmospheric museum offers a unique insight into the history of medicine and surgery. The original timber-framed Herb Garret was once used to dry and store herbs for patients’ medicines, and in 1822, an operating theatre was installed. Once used for operations that predated anaesthetics and antiseptics, it is the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe for female patients.
The afternoon walking tour will be followed by a visit to Gordon’s museum—full of 19th century pathological waxworks created by British artist Joseph Towne—with its resident artist Eleanor Crook.
That evening, we will take in a show at the legendary Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre followed by drinks or dinner.
DAY 3: October 4
CITY OF VISION, CITY OF WOE
We’ll begin our day in Bloomsbury for a visit to the Foundling Museum/Coram Fields. The Foundling Museum, opened in 2004, traces back to a hospital established in 1739 by Thomas Coram to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Each year, some one thousand babies were abandoned by parents experiencing extreme poverty or other terrible maladies. The Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram, was designed to care for and educate England’s most vulnerable citizens. The artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel were instrumental in realising Coram’s vision, by transforming the Hospital into the UK’s first public art gallery and one of London’s most fashionable venues. Hogarth encouraged leading artists to donate their work and Handel held benefit concerts of Messiah in the Hospital’s chapel.
John Soane Museum: Discover the extraordinary house and museum of Sir John Soane, one of the greatest English architects, who built and lived in it two centuries ago. The museum has been kept as it was at the time of Soane’s death in 1837, and displays his vast (and epically installed) collection of antiquities, furniture, sculptures, architectural models, and paintings.
Lunch break at Tropea Cafe in Russell Square for the best Italian coffee in town!
In the afternoon we will join Ross MacFarlane for a tour exploring magic in London, in and around some of its world class museums, esoteric bookshops, and mysterious archives and collections.
We will end the day with a screening of our guide’s love letter to London—Raft- A London Story in one of London’s seminal countercultural venues.
DAY 4: October 5
OLD FATHER THAMES (The Liquid City)
We’ll start the day visiting “Secrets of the Thames” at The London Museum Docklands, which will be our introduction to mudlarking.
After the exhibition we will board the Thames Clipper heading towards Greenwich, where we will enjoy a lunch at Goddards—one of the oldest pie & mash shops in London—followed by a walk through its famous market.
Back on the Thames Clipper we will head over to Blackfriars for a visit to Tate Modern, London’s favourite secular art cathedral, followed by our own taste of an afternoon mudlark on the Thames when the tide is low, where we will search for exposed treasures on its banks!
In the evening we will walk to a facsimile 17th century wooden pirate ship nearby where we will end the night with a special performance by London’s greatest troubadour, John Bently.
DAY 5: October 6
MARGINAL HEROES BUILD TOWERS OF GOLD- A Farewell!
We will set off on our last morning for an early trip to Covent Garden’s Jubilee flea market, one of the oldest establishments in London where you can buy from sellers who have become legends in their own right.
For lunch, we’ll grab picnic supplies and eat in the secret garden of the Actor’s Church, before we visit Pollocks Toy Shop in Covent Garden, a London institution, where we will hear the story of one man’s small but large theatre dreams.
Finally, we will cap off our tour with a stop at London's quirkiest secrets, the one-man-museum the Novelty Automation.
Optional Additional Afternoon Activity includes a visit to William Blake’s steps, to honour the city’s most famous bard, followed by a drink in the famous French House, once home to The Colony Rooms, London’s legendary artists’ hangout.
All images by our tour-guide Chiara Ambrosio