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Tube: Temple (Mon-Sat only) or Covent Garden. Temple is the largest and most complex of the Inns of Court, where every barrister in England must study before being called to the Bar. Temple itself is comprised of two Inns - Middle Temple ( www.middletemple.org.uk) and Inner Temple ( www.innertemple.org.uk) - both of which lie to the south of the Strand, and, strictly speaking, just within the boundaries of the City of London. A few very old buildings survive here, but the overall scene is dominated by the soulless neo-Georgian reconstructions that followed the devastation of the Blitz. Still, the maze of courtyards and passageways is fun to explore - especially after dark, when Temple is gas-lit. There are several points of access, simplest of which is Devereux Court. Medieval students ate, attended lectures and slept in the Middle Temple Hall (Mon-Fri 10am-noon & 3-4pm), across the courtyard, still the Inn's main dining room. The present building was constructed in the 1560s and provided the setting for many great Elizabethan masques and plays - probably including Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which is believed to have been premiered here in 1602. The hall is worth a visit for its fine hammerbeam roof, wooden panelling and decorative Elizabethan screen. The two Temple Inns share use of the complex's oldest building, Temple Church (Wed-Sun 11am-4pm), built in 1185 by the Knights Templar. An oblong chancel was added in the thirteenth century, and the whole building was damaged in the Blitz, but the original round church - modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - still stands, with its striking Purbeck-marble piers, recumbent marble effigies of knights and tortured grotesques grimacing in the spandrels of the blind arcading.
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