Greenwich is a neighbourhood in south-east London. It gave its name to the prime meridian and the point of of time zones - Greenwich Mean Time.
For many years Greenwich was a royal residence. During the Civil War, the royal palace was destroyed and replaced by the architect Christopher Wren (the architect of St Peter's Cathedral in London) built Greenwich Hospital - modelled on the Invalides' House in Paris. The Queen's House, built by the architect Inigo Jones for Anne of Denmark, has also been preserved. It now forms the centrepiece of the National Maritime Museum. Another landmark with a connection with the sea is the tea clipper Cutty Sark, in dry dock at Greenwich. In 2007, there was a fire on board, but fortunately, shortly before that, most of the ship's wooden parts, including the bow, were removed for restoration. The Cutty Sark clipper has now been fully restored.
But Greenwich's main fame is due to the Royal Observatory located here. It's been used as a reference point for coordinates and and the observation of celestial objects. In 1851, the geographic meridian passing through the axis of the passage instrument of the Greenwich Observatory was adopted as the prime meridian. At an international conference in 1884, it was decided to adopt this meridian as the universal zero point of reference. For a long time, the meridian was marked by a copper strip, then it was replaced by a steel one, and since 16 December 1999, along the zero meridian has been shining a powerful green laser beam. The Greenwich meridian not only serves as the origin of geographic longitude, but it is also the middle meridian of the zero time zone. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was taken as the reference point for time zones before the introduction of Coordinated Universal Time.
