In spite of its great age EC3 is no historical tourist trap. It has always been far too busy and far too important to bow to conservation orders, and in any case the explosive events of 1940/41 and 1992/3 cast any such sentiments to the four winds.
Tourists who come here come to marvel at the lofty temples of capitalism, and the only reminders of bygone ages are the City Churches, themselves virtually all rebuilds from the Great Fire of 1666.
The street plan and street names are the sole repository of the twenty centuries that men and women have toiled and scraped a living here. Although simplified in the reconstructions that followed the Great Fire and the Second World War, the streets have names, and twists, and funny little alleys and courts, that instantly tell you that for all the modernity of the buildings around, you are in the shadow of great history.
In recent times, the City has been a schizophrenic place, frantic mayhem on workdays and a social desert at the weekends. But there have been rapid fluctuations in the City's own population during the last century, from 30,000 in 1900 to a record low of 4,500 in 1970.
This has risen steadily since, although the bulk of the growth is to the north and west. EC3 is surely the least lived-in of the four City postcodes, befitting this financial powerhouse.
It is thought there are about 8,500 souls living in the City now, a very high figure for one square mile but still largely invisible in such a maelstrom. Nevertheless, changes are afoot that are serving to cancel this dichotomy between the 300,000 workers and the residents.
All manner of new bars and clubs are springing up to keep people on in the area after work and, as the City takes over previously working-class areas to the north and east, especially Hoxton, Shoreditch and Spitalfields, you can down a few Bacardi Breezers and not have to face an almighty commute home.
This, however, is to anticipate history somewhat. Most workers still face a hefty trek home, as the thronging crowds of commuters around Fenchurch Street and Aldgate train stations and the Monument and Tower Hill tube stations testify.
Buses fill up, trains are crowded and the new DLR terminus at Tower Gateway is as well patronised as any. Traffic has become a very poor joke, the average speed of cars is now below the 11 mph of horse and carriage days, and the fast rise in the popularity of two-wheel vehicles is an understandable development.
EC3 forms the south-eastern corner of the City, and has the highest point in the City along Cornhill in the west and Tower Hill as a further promontory in the south-east.
Its names are redolent of ancient history - Eastcheap, Cornhill, Crutched Friars, Houndsditch, the Minories, St. Mary Axe, French Ordinary Court, Bevis Marks, Undershaft, Heneage Place - and EC3's eastern boundary is the old City wall, culminating in, of course, the complex that is the Tower of London.
Houndsditch and the Minories run along the old course of the wall and the more famous streets running through our postcode include Fenchurch Street, Leadenhall Street, Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street.
The upswing in the City's population in the Nineties was largely down to office-to-dwelling conversions, although these have come to an abrupt halt as the national economy strengthens and the City needs all the offices it can lay its hands on. Cornhill and Crutched Friars have seen such conversions and Monument Street had a recent development of ten new flats.
Shopping is probably the most visible improvement in EC3's quality of life, with the conversion of the Royal Exchange to a fashion mall (get your Hermes scarves here). The Corporation of London - the City's independent governing body - is tending to insist on a retail element to any new office schemes.
The 1881 Leadenhall Market, in the shadow of the 1986 Lloyds Building, is now a justly famous conglomerate of shops, pubs and eateries; still, any visitor could be forgiven for thinking that at first glance every outlet in EC3 deals in sandwiches and more sandwiches.
Schools and doctors are yet to make a comeback into this part of the world, but the raison d'etre of EC3, for all the return of residents to the City, is to make money and to make vast pots of the stuff. The attention of most of the people who came here attest to that, from Emperor Claudius to Mervyn King.
Steve Roberts
© Find A Property 2000-2007