In 1879 the Porchester Gardens home of engineer Rookes Crompton - affectionately known as The Colonel -became the first private house in London to be illuminated effectively by electric lighting. He also lit up the Law Courts, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

Bayswater converts into an open-air art gallery every Sunday when talented Bayswater Road Artists line the pavements bordering Hyde Park to sell their original creations. Open throughout the year, rain or shine.

They lived here:
W.H. Smith, politician and newsagent, 12 Sussex Square
Robert Stephenson, railway engineer, 34 Gloucester Square

Eaton Square and neighbouring Chester Square, their architectural elegance embellished by delightful Grosvenor-created gardens, continue to attract elite international homebuyers and investors as two of the most exclusive residential addresses in today's global property market.

Elizabeth Street, off Eaton Square, offers one of the world’s most sophisticated shopping experiences in a chic collection of specialist retailers, designer boutiques, niche luxury brands, and signature outlets. Motcomb Street, Pimlico Road, and Ebury Street provide further temptation with more of the best in artisan foods, high fashion and fine art.

They lived here:
Brian Epstein, Beatles manager, 64 Chapel Street
Ian Fleming, James Bond author, 22B Ebury Street

Flower power brings the world to Chelsea for five days each May for a celebration of green fingers at the home of the Men in Scarlet, or Chelsea Pensioners. Chelsea Flower Show has blossomed socially at the Royal Hospital since 1912.

Trendy King's Road, global shop window for the Swinging Sixties, showcased the Bazaar boutique of mini-skirt creator Mary Quant and psychedelic outlets such as Granny Takes a Trip. It all changed in the Seventies with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's punk emporium at No. 430.

They lived here:
Oscar Wilde, wit and dramatist, 34 Tite Street
James Abbot McNeill Whistler, painter and etcher, 96 Cheyne Walk

Earls Court is home to some of the most magnificent garden squares in prime Central London.

Battle-scarred Sioux warrior Long Wolf, said to have helped trounce General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, was finally felled by pneumonia at Earls Court on a European tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.

They lived here:
Sir Alfred Hitchcock, film director, 153 Cromwell Road
Dame Ellen Terry, actress, 22 Barkston Gardens

Leighton House on Holland Park Road, former home of Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton, has an Arab Hall showing off his priceless Islamic tiles from Damascus. Leighton's Flaming June picture of a reclining Lady in Orange is fashionable on greetings cards.

Before the Earl of Holland moved in, Jacobean mansion Holland House was called Cope Castle after its creator Sir Walter Cope, Chancellor of the Exchequer under James I. Today opera sings out every summer in the park, which features a Japanese garden donated by Kyoto in 1991.

They lived here:
William Holman Hunt, artist, 18 Melbury Road
Sir David Low, cartoonist, 33 Melbury Court

They call it the Boulevard of Billionaires: Kensington Palace Gardens, which consolidated its reputation as Britain's wealthiest street by ousting Mayfair from the Monopoly board to reign as the traditional family game's poshest square.

The average price of a mansion on the road close to the royals of Kensington Palace, marital home of Prince William and Kate, is a princely £19.2 million, perfectly affordable if you're the Sultan of Brunei or steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal - Britain's richest man.

They lived here:
Dame Marie Rambert, ballet dancer, 19 Campden Hill Gardens
Robert Browning, poet, 29 De Vere Gardens

Luxury superstore Harrods powered up England's first escalator in 1898, offering brandy to unsteady shoppers at the top to help them recover from their ordeal on the 'moving staircase'.

The spectacular Egyptian Escalator, completed in 1997 by then owner Mohamed al Fayed, cost an estimated £30 million and depicts the story of the Valley of the Kings. Motto 'All things for all people everywhere', the retail Mecca in Knightsbridge once sold an alligator to actor Noel Coward, and the original Winnie the Pooh bear to author A.A. Milne.

They lived here:
Jane Austen, novelist, 23 Hans Place
Arnold Bennett, novelist, 75 Cadogan Square

Highly prestigious Mayfair, in prime central London close to Bond Street and the magnificent Hyde Park, is named after a boisterous annual fair once staged in the first fortnight of May.

In time it became far too disorderly for well-heeled 18th century residents. All that ghastly bare-knuckle fighting lowered the tone of the place, and the event was KO’d into a Bow field, leaving its name behind. Shepherd Market, a small square and piazza, was created on the May Fair site by architect and developer Edward Shepherd. Shop here for your cufflinks or toy soldiers before supping a pint of traditional ale in Ye Grapes or Shepherds Tavern.

They lived here:
Lord Horatio Nelson, naval commander, 103 and 147 New Bond Street
Florence Nightingale, nurse and hospital reformer, 10 South Street

Nursery assistant Diana Spencer, 19, future Princess of Wales, first posed for press photographers in Pimlico in that iconic sun-dappled image outside Young England Kindergarten, St Saviours Hall, at the northern end of St Georges Square gardens.

Raise your glasses please for a toast to Ben Pimlico, a London legend thanks to the nut-brown Pimlico ale brewed and served at his 17th century tavern in Hoxton. When South Belgravia fancied a new moniker, it reached for Ben's Pimlico.

They lived here:
Laura Ashley, designer, 83 Cambridge Street
Laurence Olivier, actor, 22 Lupus Street

TThe gilded figure of Prince Albert, Great Exhibition catalogue in hand, sits thoughtfully in his Memorial looking out towards the Royal Albert Hall.

V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, each of these centres of intellectual wonder between Kensington Gardens and Cromwell Road is visited by up to two million people every year. And locals are never short of somewhere to go on a wet Sunday afternoon.

They lived here:
Sir W.S. Gilbert, dramatist, 39 Harrington Gardens
Benny Hill, comedian, 1 Queen's Gate