Lloyds of London

The insurance undertaking Lloyds can look back on a tradition which has lasted for 300 years. It originated in a coffee house owned by one Edward Lloyd, where ships' captains, shipowners and merchants used to meet and arrange insurance for their vessels and cargoes. Lloyds is not an insurance company in the usual sense of the term but a concern which arranges policies with individual insurance firms. The new building, opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1986, was designed by Richard Rogers, the architect who also designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The architectural novelty of the building is that the internal fittings - elevators and stairs and pipes - are placed on the outside, which gives the building a bizarre appearance