Islington: In the living heart of North London

Islington: among the red bricks, dark roofs and white facades of the Georgian houses, JK Rowling placed the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix here in the Harry Potter series , Douglas Adams made us begin The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Nick Hornby set About a Boy here.

Once a poor and destitute neighborhood on the edge of the City, Islington is one of the boroughs of London that first discovered gentrification , which began in the mid-1960s. At the turn of the millennium, the neighborhood became the point of reference for the bourgeois and progressive class of the city and the entire country, not only because it was home to the civilian home of the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and the headquarters of the African National Congress in exile, the South African party that fought against apartheid and brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency.

Today Islington is a borough with many souls close to each other. An extremely lively, multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan neighborhood, which combines council houses with some of the most expensive homes in London. An area populated mainly by young families, dotted with restaurants that offer the best of cuisine from every possible origin and philosophy, with lots of public greenery, a long history of excellent public houses and some unmissable cultural highlights.

Union Chapel

At the end of the very long Upper Street, before Highbury Fields park, the Gothic bell tower of a large church stands out against the blue sky, the busy street, the windows of the bars and chain restaurants: it is Union Chapel , a Congregationalist religious building (a variant of Puritanism) which is architecturally admirable, but also interesting above all for its triple function as a church, a homeless shelter and a venue for live entertainment.

Built in the 19th century in a modern style that recalls Gothic features, at the Union Chapel you can both visit the large church capable of hosting up to 1700 people, and attend live music performances, spoken word , stand-up comedy or film screenings.

While most events have a local feel, Union Chapel often hosts notable musicians as well: in 2025, for example, Macy Gray, Colin Hay of Men at Work, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Martha Wainwright will play there.

Estorick Collection: Italian Art in London

Going to London to visit a collection of modern Italian art? The Estorick Collection is worth it. On the other hand, Islington has been the object of a massive presence of a community of Italian emigrants: even if today it is extremely diluted, a trace of its passage remains in the elegant Georgian-style building that houses the small but valuable collection of paintings and drawings (and some sculptures) by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, Mario Sironi.

It is a private art gallery located in Canonbury Square and organized on the three floors of the building that houses it. On the ground floor the café offers glasses of Tuscan wine and some Italian-inspired dishes at the small tables of a well-kept garden and, in addition to the bookshop and the ticket office, there are two rooms that host temporary exhibitions.

The actual collection is located on the first and second floors. It was assembled over the years by Eric Estorick, a New York university professor who, after World War II, fell madly in love with early twentieth-century Italian art. After his death in the early 1990s, the foundation created in his name came to life and took care of making the collection accessible to the public.

On the first floor there is a first room dedicated mainly to Carlo Carrà and Giorgio De Chirico , between futurism and surrealism, but which also contains the most famous work in the collection, the Decomposition of the planes of a Lamp by Ardengo Soffici, perhaps the most famous cubist work by an Italian artist. In a second room there is a splendid series of drawings and sketches by Giorgio Morandi .

The second floor is dedicated to some drawings and a portrait by Modigliani, to the Slovenian painter Zoran Music and to Massimo Campigli, to some works by Mario Sironi and Umberto Boccioni. There are also three small statues by Marino Marini.

Islington Public Houses

Since the dawn of time, Islington has been a farming area thanks to the many springs that characterized the area. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, wealthy Londoners enjoyed visiting the nearby countryside, and since then many public houses have sprung up, ancestors of the pubs that are still one of the attractions that distinguish the United Kingdom.

Even today, Islington is adorned with some splendid pubs with longstanding ties. At the top of Upper Street, for example, the Hope & Anchor has stood since 1880. It was one of North London’s most important live music venues in the 1970s, from rock to punk, and still has a busy calendar of musical events held in its basement.

On Essex Road , The Alpaca stands out for its more modern character, with its sleek black and green facade. The queue that often forms for a table at weekends says everything you need to know about the quality of the food served, the strong point of the place.

A little further south, on Islington High Street, is a historic pub , the York . It has been around since 1851, and a plaque near the front door reminds us that “there used to be nothing but fields here”. The York is the height of classicism: an enviable selection of beers on tap and hearty, typical English cuisine.

Camden Passage, Angel and the Regent's Canal

At the southern end of Islington, approaching the historic boundaries of the City, is Camden Passage , a fully pedestrianised street with a wealth of independent shops, bars and restaurants, small artisan businesses and flea markets that are worth exploring in depth.

An ideal place to go in search of an atypical gift to bring home, find old and new design objects, oriental ceramics and Japanese prints, vintage clothes and retro furniture.

Camden Passage opens up at the height of the triangular garden of Islington Green until it joins up with Islington High Street. On the main road instead, there is the area called Angel , which took this stately name from a historic hotel that no longer exists, the Angel Inn.

Angel is an area of ​​Islington animated by pubs , restaurants and night clubs: in the former you can experience the best of cuisine from all over the world, the latter come alive and crowded with a huge amount of people at the weekend. The Business Design Centre is a conference and exhibition centre with a scenographic architecture, with a large glass entrance, restored in the late 1980s on the previous 19th century building.

A little further east begins the walk along the Regent's Canal , an artificial canal more than ten kilometres long that connects to the Thames. A long promenade has been built along this canal that Londoners love to take on sunny Sundays, going from Islington towards Hackney and East London. The pleasant walk passes through the so-called Little Venice , an ambitious name for a stretch of canal with a small island in the centre, large barges that move placidly and buildings with aristocratic facades that overlook the path, decorated with well-kept gardens.

Parks and Gardens in Islington

A highly sought-after residential area, Islington is one of the London boroughs with a relatively low concentration of greenery: there are still many parks and gardens, although on a smaller scale than in other areas of London .

The largest park is located at the north-eastern edge of the borough and is shared with Hackney and Holloway: this is Finsbury Park , a 45-hectare green area which, in addition to splendid lawns, tree-lined paths and a large lake with an island that attracts birds of all kinds, also includes sports facilities for tennis, basketball and baseball.

The park is located near the metro station of the same name and gives its name to the surrounding area of ​​the same name, extremely multi-ethnic and lively, where you can find shops of all kinds, with some gems like Crisis , a shop of the charity of the same name that deals with homeless assistance. It offers a small and well-kept bar and a selection of vintage and second-hand clothes, furnishings and household objects.

Highbury Fields is a large green area that is crowded with fans when Arsenal play, as it is on the pedestrian route to the stadium. The beautiful facades of the houses on Highbury Crescent make for a nice view from the well-kept lawn of the park.

On City Road, near the Artillery Ground, home to the artillery of Her Majesty's Army, are Bunhill Fields , half ancient cemetery and half pleasant shady garden. The cemetery contains ancient monumental tombs, closely packed together. Among the many distinguished interments are Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe , and William Blake, one of the most important English poets of the nineteenth century.

Highbury and Arsenal

Within the borough of Islington is Highbury , the home of Arsenal football club for a century.

The history of the club and the area has gone hand in hand: Arsenal found a home in Highbury in 1913, just as the area was undergoing massive residential development. The successes of the red and whites have elevated the name of Highbury into popular and mass culture, and today it is an area where it is pleasant to walk among its elegant villas and quiet streets, perhaps even right up to the old Highbury stadium, where Arsenal played until 2005 before moving to the current Emirates Stadium, a little further north-west.

The stands of the old stadium have been transformed into a residential complex with a series of luxury apartments and where the green rectangle of the playing field was located there is now a communal garden, under which there is a gym and a swimming pool. The football connotation of the surroundings, however, remains not only in the large white and red facade of the complex, with the symbol of the cannon and the writing Arsenal Stadium, but also in the many themed bars and pubs such as The Gunners .

The stadium isn't the only Highbury institution to have suffered this fate, however. Music producer George Martin's legendary Wessex Studios, where some of the most famous albums by Queen, the Rolling Stones and the Clash saw the light, has also become a residential complex.

Dalston

On the edge between the boroughs of Islington and Hackney, of which it is administratively part, lies the area of ​​Dalston , a very lively neighbourhood , with an artistic heart devoted above all to music. It has hosted a strong Caribbean immigration, to which a strong Turkish and Eastern European community has been added in recent years, giving life to a joyful melting pot.

Dalston is ideal for finding niche cultural events, be they live music, theatre, cinema (the Rio Cinema is a retro-style multiplex with rooms that are a spectacle in themselves) or entertainment in some venue. It is the exact opposite of the poshest areas of the English capital: an area with a more street character, more impromptu and popular, as evidenced by the Ridley Road Market , with its bar among the stalls of the lively market.

In 2009, the Guardian voted Dalston the coolest place to live. In the article, a local journalist described the buzz of the place: “For architectural beauty, cleanliness, road safety and trying to walk at a normal pace on the pavement, it’s not the place. For somewhere exciting, it absolutely is.”

The neighbourhood has a strong identity of associationism and activism, as demonstrated by the gigantic mural Hackney Peace Carnival , created in 1985 and depicting a roaring, colourful and multifaceted march against the atomic bomb, complete with Gandhi looking out of a window.

Right next to this huge mural is the Eastern Curve Garden , a chaotic and festive garden with plants and flowers of all kinds, built on the route of a former railway line, complete with a community garden for residents and a bar with lots of tables where you can enjoy the spring surrounded by greenery, sipping a beer or a classic hot tea, if the temperatures are not yet so pleasant.