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Daily 5am-dusk; www.royalparks.co.uk. Tube: Regent's Park, Baker Street or Great Portland Street. As with almost all of London's royal parks, Londoners have Henry VIII to thank for Regent's Park , which he confiscated from the Church for yet more hunting grounds. However, it wasn't until the reign of the Prince Regent (later George IV) that the park began to take its current form. According to the masterplan, devised by John Nash in 1811, the park was to be girded by a continuous belt of terraces, and sprinkled with a total of 56 villas, including a magnificent pleasure palace for the Prince himself, which would be linked by Regent Street to Carlton House in St James's. The plan was never fully realized, due to lack of funds, but enough was built to create something of the idealized garden city that Nash and the Prince Regent envisaged. To appreciate the special quality of Regent's Park, take a closer look at the architecture, starting with the Nash terraces, which form a near-unbroken horseshoe of cream-coloured stucco around the Outer Circle. Within the Inner Circle is the Open Air Theatre , which puts on summer performances of Shakespeare, opera and ballet, and Queen Mary's Gardens , by far the prettiest section of the park. A large slice of the gardens is taken up with a glorious rose garden, featuring some 400 varieties, surrounded by a ring of ramblers. Clearly visible on the western edge of the park is the shiny copper dome and minaret of the London Central Mosque , an entirely appropriate addition given the Prince Regent's taste for the Orient. Non-Muslim visitors are welcome to look in at the information centre, and glimpse inside the hall of worship, which is packed out with a diversity of communities for the lunchtime Friday prayers.
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