Londoners ‘Celebrate’ Great Fire By Setting Wooden Model on Fire

A massive wooden replica model of 17th century London was set ablaze on the River Thames on Sunday night to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London that razed the city in 1666. The 120-meter-long wooden model of London’s skyline, titled London 1666, was designed by the American artist David Best, who is best known for building immense structures from wood and burning them to the ground, mostly for Nevada’s annual Burning Man festival.

The exhibitions and events marking the anniversary included, aside from the model burning, public art installations, tours, food market and an unusual exhibition of recipes and remedies for burns and scalds used at the time of the fire.

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Photo credit: andrew/Flickr

The Great Fire of London, which started at the bakery on Pudding Lane, on the night of September 2, 1666, raged for four days, destroying 80% of the mostly wooden buildings in the medieval city of London. It left an estimated 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants homeless. Officially, only six people were reported to have died, because the poor and middle-class people were not documented. Besides, the heat of the fire was so great that many victims might have been totally consumed by the fire leaving little to no skeletal remains.

London, as we know today, was eventually rebuilt with grey Portland stone, but the old street layout was preserved.

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