Long View of London from Bankside

Long View of London from Bankside is a panoramic etching made by Wenceslas Hollar in Antwerp in 1647. It depicts a panorama of London, based on drawings done while Hollar was in London in the early 1640s. Unlike earlier panoramas of London, Hollar's panorama takes a single viewpoint, the tower of St Saviour in Southwark (now Southwark Cathedral), from where he made the drawings. It shows the River Thames curving sinuously from left to right past the viewpoint.

Hollar was born in Prague. After spending time in Stuttgart, Strasburg, and Cologne, he travelled with Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel to Vienna and Prague and then accompanied Lord Arundel when he returned to England in 1627. Hollar created a 3 feet (0.91 m) long "View of Greenwich" in his first year in England, and a similar panoramic drawing in two parts has survived from 1638. He remained in the Earl's household in England for several years.

Lord Arundel was a recusant Roman Catholic; he left England in 1642 on a diplomatic mission and did not return before his death in 1646. Hollar passed into the service of the Duke of York (later King James II), but Hollar left London himself in 1644 to escape the English Civil War. After eight years in Antwerp, he returned to London in 1652, where he died in 1677.

The work was etched on six plates, with the two ends printed from a single plate so the impression must be cut in half to assemble the full panorama. Each print measures about 18 inches (46 cm) by 15 inches (38 cm), so the assembled work is about 9 feet (2.7 m) long. The prints were published by Cornelis Danckerts.

The panorama includes, from left to right, on the north bank, on the first plate, the Palace of Whitehall, Scotland Yard, Suffolk House, York House, and Durham House; on the second plate, Salisbury House, the New Exchange on the Strand, the Savoy, Somerset House, Arundel House, Covent Garden, Essex House, the Temple and St Clement Danes, Blackfriars, and Baynard's Castle; on the third plate, Queenhithe, St Andrew's, Holborn, Old St Paul's Cathedral, with Highgate Hill behind in the distance; on the fourth plate, the Steelyard, Bow Church, the Guildhall, Coalharbour, All-Hallows-the-Great, St Laurence Pountney, the Royal Exchange, The Old Swan, St Michael's, St Peter's, Fishmongers' Hall, St Magnus-the-Martyr, Old London Bridge, Greyfriars, St Dunstan-in-the-East, Billingsgate, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, the Customs House, the Tower of London, and meanders of the River Thames past St Katharine Docks towards Greenwich. On the south bank are the Bankside theatres the Globe and Hope (mislabelled), Winchester House, Southwark, and St Olave's. Each large sheet frames a particular view: the Bankside theatres, St Paul's Cathedral, the City and Southwark, the Bridge, and the Tower. Downstream of London Bridge, the Pool of London throngs filled with a variety of ocean-going vessels.

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